


The Edge of Death

by Shampain



Series: Epoch [6]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Lives, Dream Sequences, Flashbacks, Force-Sensitive Armitage Hux, Hallucinations, Horror Elements, M/M, Original Character(s), Past Child Abuse, the author's desperate attempts at sci-fi legal jargon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shampain/pseuds/Shampain
Summary: In the final days surrounding the trial, Armitage submits himself to the galaxy's justice. With his thoughts being his only companion, he finds himself adrift in memories and dreams - but when they start to interfere with one another he has a hard time placing what's real and what's not. Will his sanity hold?
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Rey, Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Series: Epoch [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822489
Comments: 29
Kudos: 40





	1. dead man walking

He stood on a needle of rock, barely wide enough for both of his feet. Below him raged an ocean, dark and grey and toxic. Above him, the rains came down.

He remembered this place, remembered gazing down at it from far above, many years ago: Parnassos.

He turned, slightly, to look over his shoulder. Though he stood upon a spire of rock he felt like perhaps one wrong move would send it teetering back and forth, tossing him ingloriously over; and he would be a speck eaten by the waves, no more significant than a pebble or a piece of driftwood. But there was nothing behind him, either.

“Phasma!” he called, placing his hands around his mouth. His voice was small and weak in the wind. The rain plastered his hair to his forehead and he tasted the chemicals in the water, singeing his tongue.

But Phasma was gone, fallen into the fiery guts of the _Supremacy_ despite having survived a childhood jumping and leaping above the water. And what was to happen to him? What poetic justice would be meted out upon his head?

He thought he heard Rey, calling to him. And then Poe, and Tico, and even Finn, who despite his hatred still treated Armitage with more kindness than his own family ever had. But their voices never made it above the howl of the wind and the crash of the ocean. They existed only as ghosts, and not for the first time he wondered if he was finally dead.

Something grabbed Armitage’s ankle and tugged. The sound of his own scream in his ears woke him, and he was back in his cell, awaiting judgment.

.

Earlier in the day, he’d had a visitor. She introduced herself as his lawyer.

“Why do I need a lawyer?” he had asked, dryly, as she sat herself down and began to make herself at home, as if she was not in a cell with an infamous mass murderer. She didn’t look up but continued to skim through her datapad, fingertips flicking about.

After two minutes of silence, in which both of them said nothing, she replied: “For accuracy.”

That had not been the answer he had expected. “I beg your pardon?”

She looked up. Pale brown hair with a greenish tinge hung in her eyes; her irises were nearly the same colour. “You and I both know that there’s only one verdict your judges will give you,” she said. “You are guilty. But how guilty? That’s my job to discover.”

He sat down across from her. Seated together, she was about Poe’s height – that is, shorter than him, but that didn’t seem to bother her. She couldn’t have been halfway through her twenties, but she was as cool as an Arkanian rainstorm. He thought about Phasma – younger than him, perhaps even more vicious – and thought he saw a glimmer of that same focus. “I have no wish for you to defend me,” he said.

“But I’ll do it anyway,” she said. She was back to scrutinizing her notes. “What you want is neither here nor there for me. I was offered this job and I took it, and will be completing it to the best of my abilities. There is very little I need from you; most of my defense relies on your war record, which I’ve been given full accessibility to by the Republic. Very useful for me, as your life has been _mercilessly_ documented.”

He raised an eyebrow, even though she was resolutely not looking at him still. He had to almost admire her for that – everyone else simply stared. “And how is that of any help?”

“Well, Mr. Hux,” she said, glancing up at him. No misuse of the title _General_ from her, either. “Almost everything we do as individuals is within a societal framework, normally based on where we happened to be when we were born. Yours happened to be one built from the shambles of the Empire. I fully believe your being raised in such surroundings is what led to you firing the Starkiller Weapon on the Hosnian System, and that is the groundwork for the evidence I will be supplying to the court for your trial….” And there she made the effort to seem like she was checking the time. “… Tomorrow.”

He sighed. “Nature versus nurture is not quite the ray of enlightenment you think it is.”

She gave him a puzzled look. “Huh.”

“What?”

“I’m not placing you before the courts to argue that you are a changed man,” she said, slowly, as if afraid that if she spoke too fast he wouldn’t be able to catch up. But her superiority, despite itself, was somehow endearing rather than infuriating. “That is inconsequential. I aim to prove that the superweapon would have been fired whether it was you with your hand on the trigger or not.”

“There was no trigger.”

“Well, thanks,” she said, dryly. “I’ll add that to my notes. In any case, my goal is as always to tell the truth. You might be dead by this time next week, Mr Hux, but I need to make sure that generations from now, people like us can look back and make their own decisions about you. I won’t pretend to know about politics, but I do know this: we are doomed to repeat history if we cannot learn from it. Something like this should never happen again.”

They sat there, in silence. Armitage was trying not to smile. She amused him, and here on the edge of death that was a rare thing. “I agree,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “So shall we get on with the trial prep, or would you like to ask me some more inane questions?”

.

Turning over on his side, he tried to go back to sleep. He knew he probably wouldn’t, because he was back to his old ways again – those nights of insomnia and obsession, where he could not relax, could not ease himself into the quietness of slumber. But instead of plans and strategy and machinations his mind wandered through his memories, verdant and green and alive. He thought about the waterfall on Ajan Kloss.

It was in walking distance from the settlement, but it was better to get there by speeder bike. They had managed to wear down enough of a path through the terrain that it only took a good twenty minutes to get to their destination – less if it was Poe and Rey racing each other, whooping like idiots and travelling at breakneck speed while Armitage and Finn hung on for dear life.

Armitage enjoyed the waterfall more than he cared to admit. There was something about all of that _water_ , wild and free, not the product of a recycling system or hydraulics or even emergency sprinklers. He would never have thought he'd like it, especially after a sodden childhood on Arkanis, but this was different. This was an aura of green light that seemed to exist in everything, because of the jungle canopy filtering the sun overhead. This was a strange peace that settled over everything, how the roar of the water became a background vibration to their shouts and splashes and Poe's laughter. There were some words that could only be understood when they were experienced: Armitage now understood _paradise_.

Rey, however, was _obsessed_ with the waterfall. She loved to be in and around it as much as possible, with company or alone. As she had been the one to locate the waterfall in the first place it was hardly a surprise. Poe and Hux had even caught her swimming naked, once, with the brazenness of a fish or a lizard.

She was young and free and powerful, a completely different creature than Kylo Ren had ever been. She was no less fearsome for all of that. She was over a decade younger than Armitage, and yet there was something weighty about her, a weariness that came from having lived a longer life than her years would have suggested. She _knew_ things, things which were dark and terrible. In that way she was not unlike himself. Perhaps that was why they got along so well; maybe it was just that it was difficult for Rey to not get along with anyone.

When she found the falls, it had been about two months since Armitage had been ‘set loose’ from his prison cell on CY-78. He was allowed to move as he pleased within the new settlement so long as he operated by its rules and made use of himself, just like everyone else. Except for two details – he had to wear a tracking monitor around his ankle to ensure he didn’t try to go off planet, and he must always be in sight of guards.

Rey had decided to make use of him, despite the warnings practically everyone but Rose and Poe gave her. She liked having him on the _Falcon_ , doing repairs, minor updates, and cleaning, because apparently the _Millennium Falcon_ – despite its fame – had never been cleaned once the entire time it was in use. Or at least that’s how it looked to Armitage.

During the first few weeks there were always guards around, watching him suspiciously, but they usually got in the way of whatever it was they were trying to get done. Also, in the beginning, Rey and Armitage argued, dropped things, and caused so much of a racket that there were constant false alarms with guards rushing in, blasters drawn, only to see that everything was fine.

Eventually the guards just gave up and left them to their business. After that, Rey became calmer, more pleasant, and less clumsy. It only took Armitage a few hours in her company to realize that she had purposefully put on a show in order to shake the security detail quicker. For that Armitage was indebted to her, because that was when things started to change.

Working on the _Falcon_ with Rey was an interesting affair, as she had never been formally trained but had learned by personal study and experience. Armitage, on the other hand, knew only enough about starships to conduct emergency repairs but had training in so many other things there were constant overlaps. Combined, they managed to not only fix up the ship but learned from each other, something Armitage would not have expected from a Jakku scavenger, or a Jedi.

Rey’s abilities with the Force still made him leery. It was a strange and frightening power and it made the people who wielded it strange and frightening as well. Armitage had only ever known the rough touch of the Force, the gaping maw of the Dark. And his knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith were of a desperate cult, mystic powers, and respect taken instead of earned. Rey was kind, but it was not Rey that he mistrusted.

One day, while Rey was in a ceiling hatch and he was handing items up to her, she decided to dangle upside-down out of it, almost getting hit in the face with a screwdriver when Armitage held it up without looking.

“So guess what?” she asked, unfazed.

Armitage looked up at her, and sighed. “What?”

“I found a cool spot last night, when I took a speeder out,” she said. Everyone in the settlement had an unofficial curfew due to energy consumption and light timers; but such things were nothing compared to a Jedi’s will. “It’s a _waterfall_.”

He had been expecting more. “And?” he asked.

“Have you been to a waterfall, then?”

For a moment, Armitage had to actually stop and think because – no, no he hadn’t. “No,” he said.

“But you know what a waterfall is, right?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t,” she said, with a sort of half-laugh at herself. “I asked Finn after I found it and he told me. Anyway. Its twenty minutes out by speeder. Do you want to go tomorrow?”

He blinked at her. “Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, for what purpose?”

She was still dangling, which mean they were both conducting their conversation with an upside-down person. Rey wiggled out of the hatch and gracefully dropped, rotating mid-air to land gently on her feet. “You know,” she said. “To look at it, I guess. And I’d like to learn how to swim. What about you, can you swim?”

He gave her a half-smile. “Well,” he said. “I can stay afloat.”

“Perfect.”

“However,” he added. “I’m meant to be working during the day. And my tracker won’t survive being submerged for very long, either.”

To her credit, Rey looked quite embarrassed. “Oh, I suppose so,” she said. She had forgotten he was a prisoner, for a second. He appreciated her greatly for that. “Well, some other time, then.”

The very next day, on the _Falcon_ , Rey asked if she could take a look at the tracker. Puzzled, but no less so than he always was about a thousand other random things Rey said to him, he complied by tugging up the leg of his trousers. Rey leaned down to brush the tracker cuff with the tip of her index finger, and it immediately fell off. A bolt even dropped to the floor and made a little pinging noise.

“What a piece of garbage,” she had declared, while he had stared at her like she was insane. “Oh well. Hey, you know what we could do today? Go to the waterfall!”

Despite the madness and the mysticism, being a Jedi had its perks, Armitage saw. The tracker had been disabled and recycled into something else, and not a single person on CY-78 said a word about it. Not even Finn.

.

He was a child again, drawing. The stylus moved in circular motions over the paper and, ever so slowly, it began to complete itself, almost separate from himself. His father had only ever seen strange designs, mindless doodles that showed just how soft in the head his bastard son was. But Armitage always saw something taking form, ever so slowly before him, even if it seemed mindless to someone else.

Blasters, canons, even lightsabers – all these weapons were their own small universe, a contained area in which their individual laws held sway. Tracking the energy bouncing within them was child’s play by the time he was thirteen, where he could put together a disassembled sniper rifle without any direction at all. He could just _see_ how it was meant to be placed together – the gaps in its unwritten blueprints revealing themselves before his eyes, a puzzle he could solve with minimal fuss. But it was a small gift, nothing more; something which gave him an edge but never an advantage.

He was still a child, but he was done his drawing and he handed it off. He saw now that Rey was sitting in front of him, never mind the fact that by this point he had not met her, that she hadn’t even been born yet. But she scrutinized the drawing with extreme curiosity, the way she used to on Ajan Kloss when she had first discovered his talent. “How interesting,” she said, holding it up to the light. He had thought he’d known what he was drawing, but now as he looked at it, it was unfamiliar. “Very good, Armitage,” she said, only it was Rae Sloane’s voice he heard.

Rey stood up and she walked away. Armitage looked down and saw he was working on a set of engineering problems on his datapad; but a crack had appeared on the screen, slowly growing, creeping across the glass. Unbidden, he found himself forcing a fingernail in, watching it widen before his eyes. The ground shuddered, and it opened up beneath him. Snow was everywhere, and it took him a moment to see he was on Starkiller Base, the planet’s crust beginning to crackle and shake, fissures racing through the ice and frozen earth beneath, forming patterns like empty veins.

He woke just before the planet devoured him.


	2. accounts and accountability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys I know _diddly_ about actual legal proceedings, so to all those who study and practice law I'd just like to say: sorry, but don't say I didn't warn you.

They sat outside his cell – the door yawning open and unlocked behind them – and looked out into the darkness of the jungle, listening to the night birds, and the insects, and the other creatures that prowled in the depths of the trees and vines. They were being watched and guarded, but at a distance. Still, Armitage imagined he could feel the blasters locking onto his heat signature. The last thing anyone needed was to lose one of the Rebellion’s war heroes to a homicidal prisoner.

Poe didn’t care about that, of course. He’d come by with a pack of cigarettes. “I feel like you smoke,” he’d said, giving it a shake. Armitage had almost, _almost_ smiled. They had ended their sexual affair as quickly as they had started it some time ago, and yet something tugged at him, even now. It came alive whenever Poe was near, something buried deep inside of his chest. As ill-advised as it was, Armitage kept feeding it.

They smoked in silence for some time, but with Poe, silence was always a temporary state. “I like you, Armitage,” he said, as if he were continuing a conversation they had been having, rather than making a startling remark out of nowhere.

Like many things Poe said to him these days, Armitage wasn’t quite sure how to process it. He tried to think about it, yet his mind would give him no satisfactory answer; instead he just shrugged, then looked away.

“You _have_ had someone like you before, haven't you?” Poe asked.

Armitage seriously considered that. “I'm not sure, to be honest,” he said. “Not to the extent you're suggesting.”

“The extent...” Poe trailed off, then shook his head.

“Are you pitying me?” Armitage sounded bored, overly so. He didn’t think Poe was fooled.

“I'm re-evaluating.”

Armitage glanced at him, surprised. The other man was staring pensively into the darkness. With the lights of the settlement behind him, his profile was lit with a gentle glow that made him more achingly beautiful than ever. Armitage drank it in.

“I guess it's not an easy thing, to get close to anyone when you’re in the First Order,” Poe said.

“Not just the First Order,” Armitage said, tearing his eyes away. “It's not a kind universe.”

“No,” he admitted. “I suppose it's not.”

They sat silently together for a bit longer, gazing out at the treetops.

“Is it alright, that I call you Armitage?” Poe asked.

“You may as well,” Armitage said. He wondered if Poe understood his words as the invitation they were.

Armitage opened his eyes. Had he fallen asleep, somehow, on the transport, or had his mind merely been drifting, sliding through the comforting memories of being with Poe? He wasn’t sure, but it was still unusual. Before, closing his eyes in a room full of armed soldiers would never happen. Now, if one of them snapped and murdered him then and there before the trial, that was no business of his, and no amount of keeping watch would change anything. They were simply all pieces of background scenery to his life, and of no real consequence.

Except one, a young woman who was staring at him from under her helmet; he saw her out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t know if she stared because she had forgotten herself, or because she had ceased to see him as anything close to human – more like a beast in a cage to be transfixed by.

“Does the staring ever stop?” he asked, keeping his gaze out the window. All eight of the soldiers in the transport suddenly moved, surprised that he had spoken, as he had not said a single word since they had retrieved him that morning. Not even when they’d directed he roll up his sleeve so they could jab the monitor in his forearm, a pill-sized device that tracked his vitals and would set off an alarm in case they dropped. There would be no possibility of a successful suicide, should Armitage make the attempt.

The soldier who had been looking flushed. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, and that caused him to turn his head and look at her, surprised by the apology. “It’s just-”

“Don’t talk to him, Callo,” said the man beside her. But every single guard he had in there with him was of equal rank with one another, so when she did not heed his advice Armitage knew it was out of stubbornness, not insubordination.

“What are they like?” she asked.

Armitage felt his lips twitch. The soldiers surrounded him, making sure he sat still and quiet during the ride, all of them under orders to make sure he was delivered alive to the trial. And every single one of them was watching him carefully. “Who?”

“Rose Tico,” she said, her eyes straying invariably to his forehead as she said it. _Oh, Tico, what a strange thing we’ve done to each other’s legends_. “Rey. Everyone. Are they like the stories say?”

Armitage had never heard the new stories because no one ever told them to him. He had, after all, been an enemy, and a prisoner, and a criminal – and it's not like he'd asked. He had some inkling, though, of the things that had happened before, gossip and news relayed to him while he was still a General. The tales, as ridiculous as they had seemed, had mostly been true.

Especially the stories about Poe.

He shifted his shoulders a bit beneath his greatcoat. It was not like his old one – this had a different style, a cut to it that kept him slim and insubstantial, rather than large and powerful. “I wouldn’t presume to pass judgment on them,” he said.

This time, someone else spoke. “Can General Dameron really fly anything?”

A moment where his heart shuddered for a bit, twisted itself inside his chest like it needed to escape. There was nowhere for it to go. “Yes,” he said. “Anything.” He turned away, back to looking out the window, and no one said anything more.

.

There was something about Rey that Armitage didn’t think anyone else had noticed. Underneath the freckles and the smile and the laugh there was something wild and unfettered; feral, even. She was familiar with civilization, yet she did not belong in it: the wilderness was where she belonged, wherever that might be.

Perhaps that was what had drawn Kylo Ren to her, and not simply the strength of the Force and its bond that existed between them. In Kylo Ren there had always been something of a boy, someone who despite it all had not or could not grow up. He had reached for Rey as an infant might try to take a star in his hand, standing alone in his crib.

Perhaps he had grown up before he had died, but Armitage doubted it. They had spent so long at odds, working with and against each other that it was almost strange to think that in the end they had barely interacted at all. It was as if the moment they separated they could finally see clearly what was in front of them and what it was that they really wanted, and it had led them down completely separate, disastrous paths.

“Should we talk about him?” Rey once asked.

“Let’s not,” he’d said. She had nodded, and the subject of Kylo Ren had never been brought up again.

He thought he saw Rey in the shadows, for a moment, as he was being escorted into the building that held the court room. A wisp of a girl flitting between one armed soldier and the next. But when he looked back he saw it really was just a shadow, shifting behind his eyes, making him see friends when there was nothing but empty space.

There was no jury; only three judges, tasked with meting out a fair and just sentence. There were no more than fifty spectators, sitting in rows at the other end of the room, far enough away from him that it was difficult to see who was there save for the ones in the front row. Davin Serz was there, so Armitage assumed everyone else was similarly politically affiliated. Not surprising, since most of the people Armitage had committed crimes against were dead. There were certainly no witnesses to call.

Serz gave Armitage a sarcastic little wave as he was escorted to his seat before the court, where he would be for the entirety of the three day trial, tucked away in a corner with his ankles chained to his chair. Once he was secure, Armitage watched his guards step back and activate the force field. It was barely visible, but that didn’t matter – it thrummed and hummed in his ears, and it was as if he could _feel_ the energy points grounded on the floor, holding it all together. If someone wanted him dead before the pronouncement, it would not be occurring while he was standing trial.

He glanced aside, barely moving his head, not wanting to let on what he was looking for. The cameras were already trained on him. His lawyer had already told him that they would be broadcasting across the HoloNet, on an open channel anyone could see. It would not be a live feed, but it would be very close – footage would be edited as it was played, telling Armitage that despite claiming transparency, there was still a certain story they wanted to tell.

His lawyer had not seemed worried. To her, everything was under control. “Congrats,” she’d said, dryly, when she informed him. “You’re gonna be a star.”

He’d almost laughed at that. He supposed, if he _had_ to have a lawyer, he would have probably picked her if he’d been given the choice. He just hoped that Poe would not be watching.

Before entering the court room, she’d sat with him for a half hour, going over the time table. “They’re going to start with prosecution,” she explained. “Today will be a lot of talk about everything terrible that you’ve done. They’ll be including supporting documents with all of your signatures and approvals and video of you being as unhinged as a broken hatch. It’s going to be rough. I’ll be there with you from beginning to end, though. Don’t worry about that.”

It had been the first thing she’d said to him that betrayed human warmth, as mild as it was. It made him ask, “You’re not worried about what this might do to your reputation?”

“No,” she said, dismissively. “My reputation is fine as is. Right. Remember that today you’ll speak only when the court addresses you, otherwise you’ll be keeping your mouth shut. If you feel like talking, that will be something we can work in tomorrow. Got it?”

“Yes,” he said. It didn’t matter; whatever decision was made, he wasn't scared. There was only one thing he was afraid of, and in a way it had already happened. Everything else was merely inevitable.

.

“Let's stop here, for a bit,” Poe decided.

Rose nodded, hefting her rifle up onto her shoulder. “Sounds good,” she said. “Hey, I’ll be right back.”

She trooped away into the jungle. Armitage found a flat, dry piece of rock near the stream and sat, watching Poe wander down the bank a bit further, where the water collected in a slower-moving spot, and huge, gnarled tree roots gave way to jewel-coloured pebbles.

Armitage wasn't watching him – he found if he did he tended to stare, and there was only so much of that he could do before the other man would notice – but after a few splashing noises Poe came back. “Here,” he said, holding out a sodden handkerchief for him.

Armitage took it. “Thank you,” he said, using it to bathe away the sweat that had gathered on the back of his neck, enjoying the momentary sensation of coolness before the water warmed to the jungle's temperature. They had been hiking for half a day, taking a relatively new route that rounded down south and swung to the northwest, back towards the settlement. The southern edge followed along the stream, which they had started to think of as the unofficial boundary.

Despite telling himself otherwise, he found his gaze going back to Poe, crouching down by the water, filling his canteen and splashing water onto his face. He was such a strong, powerfully built man, but not in a way that Armitage found threatening. Kylo Ren, he had been threatening. Poe, on the other hand, had a sort of security about him, a comfort in his presence. And maybe Armitage was pathetic, but he did enjoy the way Poe's shirts always stretched a bit over his shoulders, or the fact he never could manage to get a shirt to stay fastened at the top.

As he watched, he suddenly had a suspicion that he may not be the only one. It was an odd sensation – instead of feeling like someone was watching him, he had the inkling that someone else was also watching Poe. He cast a quick look around, but Rose was nowhere in sight, and he couldn't hear anything to suggest she was heading for them either.

Suddenly nervous, Armitage got to his feet and started to walk along the edge of the bank, towards Poe. Poe looked up at him as he approached, one hand on his hip, giving him a questioning look. But Armitage wasn’t sure how to answer it, could only understand in the back of his mind that something was about to happen without being able to vocalize just what it was.

And then he felt it, thought he could see its shadow beneath the water as it slipped through the currents without struggle, sliding its way towards Poe. Something long and predatory. Armitage broke into a run.

There was only the ripple of the water's surface to serve as warning, but Armitage was already half-falling down the bank to get to Poe. In a split second the surface exploded and the elongated jaws of a crocodilian monster roared towards them both, its body easily ten feet in length.

Armitage's panicked shout had caused Poe to jump aside a bit, most likely out of instinct alone, as the beast chomped at air that had only just been where Poe's leg was. Instead of finding flesh and bone the jagged teeth pierced the leg of his trousers, tugging him towards the water. Armitage skid down onto the bank as Poe leapt back, and they collided.

The momentum caused Armitage to topple backwards onto the pebbly embankment. By instinct his left leg wrapped around Poe’s waist, and his right boot he jammed against a tree root. Poe fell back onto his chest, knocking the air out of him, but Armitage still grabbed a fistful of the other man’s shirt, hanging on. Poe kicked out, nailing the crocodile in the snout.

The beast leapt forward again, snapped its gargantuan jaws only a few inches from Poe’s face. Poe yelled, trying to grab for his blaster, but with the next rush the beast took hold of his water canteen and trapped his arm against his side as the strap pulled tight.

The mud beneath the tree root gave way and Armitage’s foot slipped, his grip on land weakening. They were both shouting for Rose, though they were partially drowned out by the splashing of the water and a strange, angry, roaring noise the beast made. He felt terror and panic as the crocodile attempted to drag them both into the water, but Armitage clung on for dear life – he clung onto Poe, knowing in his heart that if they were pulled into the current that would be the end of it.

Poe scrambled back towards the embankment, succeeding only in preventing both of them from being dragged underwater as opposed to getting them further back to safety. The water lapped at the back of his thighs, turning the land to mud. How long they could struggle like this, Armitage didn’t know. The seconds felt like minutes, dragging out long and intense and deadly.

Yet in between his shocks of panic Armitage felt like he could feel the presence of everything around them, of the trees and vines and birds and flowers and the crocodile and even the water as some sort of living entity. More amazingly, it was as if he could feel the blood thrumming in Poe's veins as they struggled.

“Let go!” he realized Poe was shouting at him. “Just let me go!”

 _Absolutely not_.

Another ferocious tug had Armitage's right foot jamming between the tree root and the soft earth beneath. Pain flashed up his ankle but finally, _finally_ his mind was working again and he was already reaching for the knife he had stored in his left boot, a knife he wasn't supposed to have.

He jerked the blade underneath the strap of Poe's canteen, then tore the serrated edge against the canvas, ripping it apart. The strap broke from the pressure of the blade and the pull from the beast combined, and as soon as Poe had his arm free he drew his blaster and started firing right into its snapping jaws.

At that point they heard Rose crashing through the undergrowth, shouting at them to get down. Armitage dragged Poe back against him, arm over the other man’s chest, throwing a look over his shoulder to see Rose kneeling on the bank, blaster rifle at her shoulder, firing wildly at the now-retreating reptile.

The water splashed and then, suddenly, dissolved into mere ripples and the casual flow of the stream itself. Silence reigned.

“Holy shit,” Poe said.

.

“State, then, your name and your argument for the defense.”

Armitage watched his lawyer get to her feet with disguised interest. He had not even bothered to learn her name; they both seemed to wordlessly agree that it wasn’t important. She was dressed in clothes of green and black that made her look older and more elegant than she had during their debriefing session the day before, and even though the man they had arguing for the prosecution was burly and tall, she had no trouble commanding attention even with her short stature. She was much shorter than Poe, just a bit taller than Tico.

“Mara, of Hays Minor,” she said. It took all of Armitage’s effort to confine his reaction to a single, slow blink. “I am here to represent the interests of the defense in this case of the Republic vs Armitage Hux, former General of the First Order. 

“Your honours, I come before you, the court, and the galaxy to ask for leniency. Armitage Hux was a cog in the machine of the First Order, a society allowed to run rampant through the galaxy despite repeated warnings from General Leia Organa and others. Over the course of this trial I will be presenting evidence to show the reality of the First Order and the extent of Armitage Hux’s agency and lack thereof within it. I also want to reiterate that he comes before the court in good faith and intends to submit himself utterly to the system of justice we are operating within today. He has informed me that he has no wish to submit his own testimony, and desires that the proceedings be carried out by myself in his name.”

The three judges listened to her attentively from where they were seated at the head of the room, to Armitage’s right. She had told him all about them – one was an actual soldier who had fought on the ground in Exegol, despite his advanced years. The other two were newly minted senators, perhaps no more than ten years older than Armitage from their appearance. The judge in the middle – the soldier – nodded, and said, “Very well. In this sense, the court will address Armitage Hux.”

All eyes were on him, now. “Sir,” the judge continued. “Do you submit yourself to this court, the law, and the scales of justice?”

He was used to being the centre of attention, knew exactly how to pitch his voice to take command of a room. Instead he spoke softly, still somehow managing to be caught by the audio magnifier so that everyone in the courtroom could hear him. “Yes.”

The judge nodded. “And do you consent to allowing Representative Mara of Hays Minor to argue for you in the defense?”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” he said. “Defense, you may be seated. Prosecution, you have the floor.”

.

The first day was over; he barely remembered what went on. A lot of gasps from the small audience, a lot of shouting from the prosecution. He did remember Mara, though, and how she behaved through the entire ordeal – calm, collected, unbothered. She would have made a fantastic General. But the war was over, hopefully for a long time now.

His room by the courthouse was more comfortable than his floating prison out in the middle of space, but he was so heavily guarded he somehow felt more boxed in than ever before. There were four guards outside his front door alone. However, he was left in peace; the monitor in his arm meant that he didn’t need to be watched directly anymore. And the shower, he discovered, had the best water pressure he’d experienced since he’d left the _Steadfast_.

In the bathroom, he paused to consider his reflection above the sink critically. He’d always been thin and pale, sort of ghostly to look at – _ghastly_ according to some – but even buried inside of his own self-loathing he had recognized how he’d changed. The sun on Ajan Kloss had brought out warmth and more freckles than he had ever known existed, and sleeping in safety, without the weight of entire fleets hanging over him, had finally brought him rest.

All his life he had moved from one focus to the next to the point that he was convinced without it he would find himself without purpose, adrift and off kilter. Instead he had found peace. And ever since leaving the dormitories of the Academy he had never shared living space with anyone, let alone a bed, yet having Poe sleeping beside him had been the most comforting experience of his life.

It wasn’t just the grooming and the clothes that made him look like General Hux again, it was the imprisonment. Because that’s what life in the First Order had _been_ , after all, he could see that clearly now that he had stepped away from it. Blocked in at all sides with the barest of choices available to him, there had been nowhere to go but up, clawing his way to leadership because there, at least, he had some semblance of freedom.

A lie, just like everything else.

As he studied his reflection, a flicker of movement caught his eyes – he glanced over his shoulder, but there was nothing. Turning back to the mirror, though, he noticed a thin trail of blood travelling down his brow. He was bleeding? He touched his forehead and the fingertips came away wet. As he did so, the ground shuddered beneath him.

A strong grip on his forearm, and he turned to see Tico, who was dragging him across the war room now in the aftermath of Exegol. There was screaming and cheering and sobbing all around them – it was over, everything was over, the rebels had won – but she did not relent. “Stick with me,” she said. “If someone gets you on your own they’re just as likely to murder you as shove you back in a cell. Come on.”

As he had back then, Armitage wrenched his arm free. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Making sure you don’t get killed, obviously.”

“Why?”

The frustrated look on her face had rivalled any of his father’s expressions, but it wasn’t directed at him. “I don’t know,” she had snapped. “Ask me later!”

He hesitated, and just like that, he was back in front of the mirror. There was no trace of blood anywhere, and when he inspected the scar on his forehead he saw it was no different than before. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out, slowly, counting, an old technique he’d been using since he was a teenager to calm down.

_You’re losing it, Hux._

He figured he may as well sleep. That was one thing he could at least try to maintain, even now. But even as he laid there he felt like he could sense the guards, hovering in the hallway, and outside the building, making their way in staggered rounds throughout the night to make sure he didn’t get out and no one got in. As if there was anywhere to go; as if there was anyone to see him.

.

“You didn’t tell me you were from Hays Minor,” he said, as they sat together the morning before the trial was due to continue.

Mara looked up at him and shrugged. “So?” she asked.

She had caf; she’d brought him tarine tea. Undoubtedly, that detail had been buried in his files somewhere, as he had no idea how else she might have discovered his preference for it. “The First Order and Hays Minor have an unsettling history,” he said.

“Right, yes, that,” Mara said. She fell silent, but after several long, drawn out seconds she began to speak again – not of herself, obviously. She dodged questions admirably, but what else could he expect from a lawyer? “Be prepared today. This will be harder than yesterday.”

“How so?”

She tapped her fingernail meaningfully against her datapad, where his entire life was written out for her eyes, and he grimaced. “Must you?” he asked, quietly.

“I’m afraid I must,” she replied. Her voice had gone soft, and calm. “Anyway, you didn’t choose to be the son of a bad man. There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

.

They were laying in Poe’s bed, naked, exploring one another. They had gone to bed hours before but they still had yet to fall asleep – there was too much to see and know and touch. They hadn’t told anyone yet, but it wouldn’t be long before everyone found out. It was a small settlement. Besides, he had a feeling Rey already knew just by looking at them.

Poe trailed a fingertip over Armitage’s hip bone, along the raised skin of a scar.

“Where’s this from?” he asked.

“Training sim,” Armitage said, smiling faintly. It was not a good memory, but looking back it was nowhere near the worst. “Slipped and fell off the side of a false walkway. I landed about ten metres down onto a ledge. That’s where the bone came out.”

Poe hissed in sympathy. “Terrible,” he said. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

Poe shook his head. “I never really took you for a man of action,” he remarked, which caused Armitage to sit up in bed, partially offended.

“Excuse me?” he asked, but Poe just laughed.

“No, sorry,” he said, quickly, reaching out to pull Armitage back down to him. “I just meant- you know, I guess I didn’t expect you’d be so roughed up. You’re so pretty.”

“Stop it.” Armitage knew he was blushing terribly, now.

Poe grinned. “And you were in command, so I guess I didn’t picture you being so physical. But you have more scars than I do.”

That was true. Access to the leading surgeons, doctors, and endless bacta had not prevented Armitage from slowly accruing several physical marks over the years, especially during his childhood when he had been more isolated than ever. He didn’t know why he said it – he hated pity – but when he opened his mouth the truth came out. “Most of them are from before I was twenty,” he said.

He needed Poe to _know_ , he realized. He wanted to be seen. In the First Order all of his weaknesses – and many of his strengths – had to be kept guarded and secret for his own survival, but that world was gone. He wanted to exist properly in this new one, with Poe.

Poe brushed some hair out of Armitage’s face. “From training?” he asked, his tone so delicate Armitage knew the other man already had his suspicions.

“From my father.”

The sound of Mara slapping down her datapad and picking up a folder brought him back to reality and out of his head. He watched as she held several sheets up to the light, all of them dark and murky but very familiar to him.

“If the judges will take a moment to look at the exhibits I have provided them,” she said. She was talking to the cameras, just as the prosecution had done the day before. “They will see exactly what I have here, which is a collection of all medical scans completed on Armitage Hux during his first decade of life within the remnants of the old Empire, before its conversion into the First Order. For the rest of the court, I will describe what I have. These were taken, untampered and unmarked, from data files within the First Order’s records.

“The earliest scan is from 5 ABY,” she said, holding up one scan. “This one documents a broken arm and a concussion. As a reminder, Armitage Hux was born on Year Zero, meaning he was, at most, five years old at the time of these injuries.

“This is a medical report from 7 ABY,” Mara continued. Armitage kept his gaze steadily ahead. At that moment, he almost wished he could hallucinate a friend in the audience. “Another concussion, and a broken foot, _‘as if_ ,” here she flicked through the pages, so that she might correctly quote the doctor’s remarks, “ _his foot was stuck in an automatic door, or stomped by a much heavier assailant_.’

“8 ABY. Fractured spine from ‘ _a tumble down the stairs’_. The doctor here writes a recommendation of two weeks recovery time. I have attached for the judges’ reference another file proving that Armitage Hux was sent back into schooling less than a week after this scan was taken.

“10 ABY. Three broken fingers. The doctor provided no additional remarks.

“At this point, I would like to let it be known that these are only the scans for which an injury was proved debilitating enough to require one; an untold number has been left undocumented,” Mara said, turning for a moment and looking to Armitage, who looked blankly back at her. Her mouth twisted for a moment, and then she was back to being as cool as ever. “In his first ten years of life Armitage Hux has broken more bones than many of us have in a lifetime. It has also been confirmed through various sources that every single injury was a result of his father, Brendol Hux, formerly of the Empire. You will find the sources and depositions attached.

“As we have discussed already, Armitage’s birth was illegitimate and outside the bounds of Brendol Hux’s marriage, yet he remained the man’s only son. Despite this, there is no trace of love or respect from father to son. In fact, Brendol Hux has been recorded as saying on more than one occasion that Armitage has been more burden than blessing.

“I put this evidence before the court, not to prove that Armitage Hux deserves mercy, but so that it can be understood that there was only one choice he had for survival: to be a cadet. At this point, he has already been born into what would eventually become the First Order, so even though he made his choice, in a way he did not have one. But at least it would help get him out of his father’s presence, would earn him good grace, and above all, would teach him to defend himself. This was a young boy’s path to safety. My utmost respect to your honours, but I do not think any court in the world can accurately judge the choices or desires of a brutalized child.”

.

He hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, and when he did he kept dreaming of Rey. She kept coming back, over and over again, every night. Sometimes Finn was with her, looking surly and annoyed, like he always used to. (“That’s just his face,” Rey had joked, one time, and then she had shrieked when Finn grabbed her and tossed her mercilessly into the pool by the waterfall.)

He wanted Poe; he _missed_ Poe. But his dreams were free of him, and it was only Rey. Sometimes she was in his workshop with him. Sometimes he was on the _Falcon_ with her. Always there seemed to be something unspoken between them, like an argument he couldn’t remember.

Armitage had woken in the middle of the night, terrified, when in his dreams Rey had turned to look at him with eyes that were nearly black. “ _What do you think you’re doing_?” she’d asked, her mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. “ _What are you doing here?”_

And then a flash of red, shimmering and angry: the blade of a descending lightsaber.

He could still hear the sound of it, in his ears, as the court proceedings continued. Mara commanded the floor for hours, producing more and more evidence, almost as much as the prosecution had the day before. While the prosecution had provided dozens upon dozens of orders Armitage had approved and signed which led to Starkiller’s fruition, including the final forsaken order to fire it, she offered up just as many from earlier in the process that he hadn’t had any hand in.

“Starkiller Base took decades of research into dark energy and hyperspace tunneling before the excavation of Ilum could even begin,” Mara declared. “To place the entirety of the blame for the superweapon’s existence on Armitage Hux’s shoulders would not only be a mistake, it would be to make him a scapegoat on which all the sins of the First Order may rest.”

Armitage smothered the sarcastic smile that wanted to make it onto his face. _Scapegoat_ is exactly what the Republic was aiming for and everyone knew it, but at least Mara was declaring it openly for all to see. This would be a career-making case for her, he knew, regardless of how it ended.

“It was being built, and, once construction was complete, it would be fired. Of this there can be no argument,” she continued, pacing the floor. “That he took over from his predecessors tells us only he was ambitious in his career. This could be said for any young person in such surroundings. While the attack on Hosnian Prime and surrounding planets was spearheaded by General Hux, it was an attack that was already meant to happen. As in many things, it was only a matter of time.”

Here, Mara stopped, and the court was silent. She leaned down over her datapad, calmly flicking away, nodding to herself. The audience murmured and shifted. Armitage, though, watched her intently, wondering again at this strange young woman who had so coolly entered his life and now had it memorized. He knew what working under pressure looked like, and she was as prepared as it was possible to be.

“And so,” she said, looking up again. “It did happen. This marked the destruction of Courtsilius, Cardota, Raysho, Hosnian, and Hosnian Prime. Countless lives lost. A tragedy of unimaginable proportions. And yet, only _one_ individual from the First Order sought to make amends to this action. So, if it pleases the court, I would like to take a moment to summarize the actions of Armitage Hux about three years ago, starting in 35 ABY up to today. The beginning of the end.”

.

“Not bad, Mara. Not bad at all.”

They were being escorted back to his quarters, Mara at his side, six guards surrounding them. As they turned the corner, there was Davin Serz, hands in his pockets and looking very pleased. By something specific or just life in general, Armitage couldn’t be sure.

Mara stopped, and the entire escort ground to a halt. A frown was hovering on her face. “Do you wish to speak to my client?” she asked. She kept referring to Armitage as such, even though he definitely wasn’t paying for her – you had to have money for that, and Armitage gave up most of his when he left the First Order. Someone else was footing the bill, likely the Republic in the name of transparency.

Serz shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said. “I wanted to speak with _you_. I find your commitment to your job most impressive.”

“Thank you,” she replied, brusquely. She made as if to take a step and continue walking, but Serz sidled in front of her. Armitage, for his part, was suddenly very, very curious, and had no intention in going anywhere.

“Especially since you come from such a _ravaged_ planet,” Serz said. “The First Order definitely left its mark on you, eh? I’m sure you see this as some proof that you can be professional and rise above it, but it does leave a bad taste in the mouth to think about how you don’t seem to care that your client is the reason you don’t have a daughter anymore.”

Mara gave him a gentle, sweet smile. “Watch your tongue, Serz,” she said. “Or I’ll cut it out while you sleep. Then you won’t be bothered by any bad tastes.”

He laughed, sharply, and Armitage was seized with the desire to punch him in the face. “Hilarious as always,” he said, fondly. “I look forward to your closing remarks tomorrow. Should be fun.”

Mara gazed at him. “Your nose is still crooked,” she said, flatly. Ignoring the angry flashing of his eyes, she rather delicately held up her hand and shifted it slowly to the side, indicating he get out of her way. He stepped aside, and the escort continued unimpeded down the corridor.

“So someone _did_ break his nose,” Armitage remarked, after a moment. It was an easier subject than the fact that his lawyer had apparently lost a child because of him.

She gave him a surprised look. “Your boyfriend walloped him in the face a couple months back. It’s common knowledge by now. Honestly, Mr Hux, I don’t know how you manage these days knowing nothing at all.”

“He-”

“It’s true,” said one of his guards, behind him. He turned to look at him quizzically. “ _Everyone_ knows Poe Dameron broke his nose.”

“Well look at that,” Mara said to him as they stopped outside his door, one of the guards beginning to unlock it. “So you _can_ smile.”

.

“I didn’t think I would like you,” Mara said.

He had been in the middle of some floor exercises when he’d heard the knock at his door. The night before he had been left in peace between the end of the first day in court and the start of the next, so he hadn’t expected to be interrupted.

It was his lawyer, with a cup of caf, a cup of tarine, and a pack of cigarettes.

They were sitting at the small table in the room, smoking, and talking. She’d heard he wasn’t eating. “While I appreciate your refusal to plump up while on death row, I have to take a stand against you fainting from low blood sugar while I’m talking tomorrow.”

“So you’re bribing me with tea and cigarettes?”

“What else would I bribe you with?” she’d scoffed. “A walk outside? Not likely. When your dinner arrives, do me a favour and eat it, won’t you.”

She was tapping the lighter against the table, now, apparently deep in thought. She had the gravitas of someone much older – dare he say it, much like himself – to the point where he didn’t wish to interrupt her. That’s when she said she liked him.

It had been a surprise to hear, at first. Armitage was so used to being hated that even simmering dislike was a passable emotion. “I didn’t think I would like you either,” he replied.

She snorted. “Lawyers, huh?”

“I didn’t want to be defended.”

“And yet, here we both are.”

“Why _are_ you here?”

“Well, I was offered this job because no one thought I could do anything with it, and I take umbrage at being thought poorly of,” she said, as she tapped ash out in her empty caf cup. “Three other reps passed it up before it got to me. Lawyers with a lot more skill and experience. They saw it only as an either/or situation: save a murderer, or lose a case. But I saw it as an opportunity. That’s why Serz has been needling at me; he thinks I’m underqualified.”

“Not the only reason,” Armitage remarked. She raised her eyebrows at him.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you pay more attention than anyone would like,” she said. “You’re just one of those people who sees what’s going on. What’s on your mind?”

“What happened to your daughter?”

She sighed, inspecting the glowing end of her cigarette. “Stormtrooper program,” she said. “When she was three. The First Order took her.”

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t respond to that, even though he really, truly meant it. The First Order was supposed to be different from the Empire; it was supposed to be a newer, braver world they were starting. Instead it collapsed back in on itself. It was never supposed to be that way, but perhaps all hope the First Order had had of being any different had disappeared along with Rae Sloane over a decade ago.

“You must have been very young,” he said.

She nodded. “Sixteen,” she said.

“Just a child yourself.”

Her mouth twisted. “You think so?” she asked. “Were you a child when you were sixteen?”

He didn’t have to think about it to answer her truthfully. “I suppose not.”

“I’m like you, Hux. I grew up fast, too.” She shifted forward in her seat, crushed her cigarette out in the cup. She held it out to him so he could tap the ash away on his own. “When I got pregnant I was so terrified and so happy. I told myself I would be a _great_ mother. I like to think I was, while I had her. I learned how to do a lot of things because of her – how to cook, and take care of a home, and make a living wage. How to braid hair, even. I think those were the best three years of my life, even though I don’t think I slept for any of it,” she added, causing a quick smile to flash across his lips, unbidden.

“And you’re still defending me in court. That takes strength.”

She raised one shoulder in a small shrug. “I was told to build a case for you, I was given your files, and then that’s what I did. Sometimes, all you can do is your job. Imagine how annoying it was for me to realize you were working on the same logic.”

“You can’t really think that.”

She smirked. “I know it’s not the same,” she said. “But it _is_ similar. I know what choices are. What a lot of people don’t realize is that our choices only exist when there is opportunity, and not everyone gets the same ones. Some of us have more than others.”

“That is no reason to shirk responsibility for past sins.”

“I know,” she said. “And I know you know it, because you’re here and you haven’t tried to take your own way out, so don’t keep acting like I’m better than you.”

“No chance of that,” he said, tapping his forearm, where the monitor tracking his vitals was lodged. She rolled her eyes.

“You would be able to bypass that if you wanted,” she said.

After a moment, she slid the lighter over to him and got to her feet. She left the pack of cigarettes on the table, clearly with no intention in taking them with her either. “I get it, you know,” she said. “Not entirely, but most of it. It must have felt impossible at times.”

“Get what?”

“The fact you had to relearn how the world works,” she said. “You made the choice to break out of the world you were living in, only to find things weren’t what you’d been told they were. Friends and relationships and trust and decency. What you did took a lot of guts. The First Order did everything in its power to make you a bad man, but now you’re here, and no one will ever take that from you. Keep the cigarettes,” she added. “I only smoke the night before a ruling, anyway. See you tomorrow.”

.

Finally, that night, he dreamed of Poe.

It was not a memory, not really, but it was as real as anything that had ever happened between them. It was just Poe and the way he always was, funny and charming, irreverent and loving. There were no dangers hovering over them, no task that needed to be completed, and even the odd dream logic that always seemed to exist didn’t turn into anything stressful or upsetting. It was the sort of dream he’d never really had for most of his life, calm and soft and comforting, easy to forget as soon as he woke. Actually, it was the type of dream that only seemed to exist after he’d met Poe.

But when he woke he did not forget, not this time. He realized he had been sleeping, automatically, on the side of the bed he used to take whenever he shared with Poe. His hand slipped over the mattress and he thought he felt a ghost of warmth, as if Poe had been there not some minutes ago, having crept away in the night; as if he had gone but would soon be back.

He was alone.

He hadn’t expected to weep, had thought of tears to be an indulgence he no longer had any use for, and yet they came. He _loved_ Poe, with the entirety of his being; when he thought about it he felt his entire body thrum, come alive in a way it never had before in his life, and it was scary and amazing and wonderful and the most pain he had ever experienced. It was like his chest was caving in on itself, his flesh turned inside out, his bones disintegrating into the wind. He hated that he’d never said it more, but he’d done it as often as he could manage, fighting back the panic to whisper the words to Poe, late at night, when it was just the two of them and the sounds of the jungle outside. _I love you. I will always love you_.

But it was possible to be both wondrously happy and terribly sad, and the fact Poe loved him back was more fantastic than anything else he had ever experienced. _At least I had that_ , he thought to himself. _I’ll have always had Poe, even for a little while_.

.

The next morning Mara did not smile; she seemed deep in thought, mind drawn inwards. She nodded to him as they met for the third and final time to prepare for the day ahead.

“Today will be the longest day,” she’d said, and she hadn’t needed to explain. The prosecution and the defense would go over their closing statements, and then the judges would absent themselves to deliberate. For how long, it was impossible to tell – in theory they could take weeks to come up with a verdict. But Armitage knew they would find out soon; the decision would have already been made, regardless of Mara’s efforts otherwise.

She took a moment to fuss over him, taking him by surprise. She swept her hands over his shoulders, made sure the cuffs of his sleeves were straightened. Then she reached up and, very carefully, extricated a strand of hair to let it fall over his brow. He had been stared at and disassembled across the HoloNet for the past two days and he had been a picture of perfection the entire time. Whether she was trying to manipulate views or simply wanted there to be one physical clue that he was not as he seemed on his final day in public, he did not know and did not ask.

She nodded to herself and said, to the guards, “We’re ready.”

“Wait,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows, expectantly.

“Whatever happens,” he said, “thank you.”

Her mouth twisted. “Don’t,” she said, quietly. And then, together, they walked into court.

It took an hour at most to bring the court back into session, to allow each lawyer their time on the floor. The prosecution’s closing statement was strong and aggressive in keeping with Armitage’s crimes. Mara’s final remarks, however, were beautiful, if only because of how she spoke, fluid and musical with real _belief_ resonating in each word. “The facts as they have been presented to the court leave me in no doubt as to the innocence of Armitage Hux, and proof that he is a victim of the First Order alongside untold trillions,” she said. She looked directly at the judges as she spoke, fearless. “Let us see if we can rise into a new age of enlightenment, or if we will forever be prisoners to the events of the past.”

They were back together again in the briefing room, waiting. The cigarettes came out. They didn’t speak, simply waited together, as outside the open door the guards shifted nervously, murmured to each other, too quiet for either of them to hear.

“Any moment now,” Mara said, after nearly two hours of silence according to the clock on the wall.

The minutes continued to tick by. Replacements came for the guards, indicating it had long since passed lunchtime, but neither Armitage nor Mara moved. To do anything else would simply be a distraction from what they were really doing, which was waiting.

Finally, a red-suited intern knocked on the open door. “The judges are ready,” she said.

Back into the courtroom; back in front of the cameras. As there had been for the past three days, one holocamera and one imager seemed to follow Mara around. Armitage suspected she might be a new piece of entertainment for the public, now, as the prosecution had certainly not warranted as much attention. As for himself, he knew every nanosecond of his existence was being documented. Fodder for the ages.

The judges sat at their table, serious-faced and tense. The judge on the very left, a woman with straw coloured hair, nodded to indicate that they were ready to speak. The entire room went silent, from the audience to the lawyers to the guards; nothing made a sound save for the hum and click of the cameras, the force field around his seat, and the creaks of various people shifting their weight in their chairs.

“To the court, the people of the Republic, and Armitage Hux,” she said, calmly. “After careful deliberation, we have reached the following judgment.

“Armitage Hux,” she continued. Armitage met her gaze, and saw that she flinched back a moment in surprise, as if she hadn’t expected him to look at her, but she spoke without pause. “We the judges, representing the interests of the Republic and common decency, do hereby proclaim you to be guilty of war crimes, most terrible of which being the Hosnian Cataclysm of 34 ABY. For this we sentence you to death three days from now by firing squad.”


	3. the last three days

Everyone was gone.

In a way it was frightening, because despite how spread out the settlement was – the landscape moved up and down, a strange half-warren of jungle and rock formations and hills – there had always been movement and chaos. Even in the aftermath of Exegol when most people had gone to find a home somewhere else, there had been a large amount of those who had settled in. It was impossible to walk from one end to the other without being seen by someone else, but right now there was no one.

Why, he wasn’t sure. He also did not really want to find out; in such an unsettling place, he was more interested in finding Poe.

There was nothing to suggest his presence, not even the telltale tracks BB-8 left whenever he was ricocheting around the settlement. But as he made his way through, peering into the shadows, he noticed a flash of movement in the corner of his eyes. He jerked around and saw something fluttering before disappearing into the jungle. Without needing to think about it, he took pursuit.

Being on Ajan Kloss had been the longest he had ever spent planetside since his childhood on Arkanis; it was also the longest he had ever spent so close to nature. This was a true landscape, not an endless array of meticulously designed cabins and halls and hangars. Still, he had it memorized in a way, because even in chaos it was possible to look for patterns and routes. He could run and take pursuit through the greenery as well as anyone else on the settlement after the first few months.

From the swiftness, though, he suspected someone in particular.

He broke through the cover of trees and found himself on an embankment. Down towards the side of the stream was Rey in her customary beaten white, standing in the shallows.

“Rey,” he said.

She looked over her shoulder and up at him. The sun was in her eyes and she raised her hand so that she could see him better. “There you are,” she said. “I’ve _literally_ been looking all over for you.”

“You should get out of the water, Rey,” he said, starting to carefully pick his way towards her.

She just grinned and shook her head. Her hair was loose, wisps of it sticking to her face in the humid jungle heat. “There’s nothing in here,” she said. “Nothing dangerous, anyway. Can't you tell?”

“I can’t see underwater, Rey.”

She sighed, as if Armitage was being illogical, and not the other way around. “Alright,” she said, starting to wade to the bank. “If it makes you feel better.”

She still stood on the shore, though, close to the water. Armitage came up beside her, staring at the shallows with some misgiving. The last time they took the peacefulness of Ajan Kloss for granted, they’d almost lost Poe.

“It’s good to see you,” she offered. He realized then that he hadn’t spoken, hadn’t offered her any words of welcome.

“You, too,” he said. She smiled at him, and he felt her reach out, brushing her fingertips against the back of his hand. His own hand flexed for a moment, uncertain, but then he let her take it, fingers curling together. She squeezed for a moment, comfortingly. When Rey did such things, there was never any suggestion that she was requesting something from him; like her kindness, it was something she just liked to give away.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” she said, looking out at the water, then tipping her head up to the sky. “I almost miss it as much as I miss you and Poe.”

“Where did you go, after you left?” he asked.

She sighed, and shrugged. “Finn and I, we went to find somewhere old and new,” she said. “To train. Somewhere we could feel the Force.”

“And how did training go?”

Her lips twitched into a smile. “Very good.” She looked around her, thoughtfully. “It’s interesting that we’re here. I guess it makes sense.”

Armitage looked out across the river, where the jungle grew thick and shadowy. “Does it?”

“You feel alive here, don't you?” Rey asked. “I see it on your face. Didn't think you'd ever take to nature, huh?”

“Honestly, no,” Armitage said, watching her with confusion. “You're right, it's different.”

“It's the Force,” she said, and he fought the urge to roll his eyes. It was _always_ about the Force with Rey. “It's not _always_ about the Force,” she added, because apparently he had not been able to disguise his reaction.

“Can you ever talk about anything else?” he asked.

“Nothing interesting,” she said. “Unless you really want to know the junk-scavenging trade.”

“Not really.”

“Ha.”

“I thought the whole point of the Force was that it was everywhere,” he said. “Does it really matter where you are?”

“Mmmn, yeah,” she said. “You can feel it better the more living things you’re around. That’s all it is, you know; just tangles of energy surrounding everything. That’s, um,” and she paused, let go of his hand to tuck some hair behind her ear. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

“Talk about what? The Force?”

“Energy,” she corrected.

A knock on his door woke him up. Armitage always came awake relatively quickly – sleep never really felt like a natural state to him, not now when he slept alone, anyway – but somehow he felt incredibly groggy just then. A look at the clock on his bedside table told him that he had managed to sleep in for one of the few times in his life.

He had expected it to be the guards informing him of something regarding his new existence – the next three days would be like one long waiting game, and he had no real idea of how it would play out – but instead it was his lawyer.

Well, not anymore. Or so he thought.

“Good morning,” Mara said. On the discovery that for the first time Armitage was not already awake and dressed, she’d been forced to wait outside for ten minutes while he made himself acceptable. He expected her to act like he was wasting her valuable time, but she didn’t make a single remark about it. “I brought you tea.” She had caf for herself.

“Thank you,” he said. They sat down at the table together. He had just woken up, and normally he would have said no, but when she offered him a cigarette he took it. It’s not like he had a reason to curtail his habit for longevity reasons.

After she lit it for him, she lit one for herself. “Thought you only smoked before a ruling,” he remarked.

“Oh, well, I’m full of Bantha crap,” she admitted. “How are you doing this morning?”

He offered her a small but potent smile. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Astounding.”

She scoffed and nodded. “Yeah,” she said, exhaling a faint stream of smoke. “I bet.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked, curious. “Not to sound ungrateful, but the trial is over.”

Mara shifted in her seat. “Yes, I know,” she said. “And if you remember, we lost. I wanted to come and apologise.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “There was no way I was going to make it out of this any other way.”

“Oh, shut _up_ , Hux,” Mara said, rubbing her thumb between her eyebrows, exasperated. “I know that the best we could have done was imprisonment for the rest of your life, and even that was a long shot, but afford me some professional courtesy, won’t you?”

Feeling oddly chastised, Armitage raised his hands in surrender. She nodded.

“Anyway,” she said, tapping away some cigarette ash. “I wanted to offer you my services for the next three days. Free of charge, of course. Least I could do.”

He blinked. “What kind of services?”

“Well, I can see if I can get things done for you, before the end,” she explained. “Arrangements. Sort everything out. It wouldn’t be out of order for me to make some demands for you, and you’re more likely to get your way with legal clout behind you. Now, before you try to start taking the high road and tell me you want to live like a monk before the end,” she began. He interrupted her.

“Actually, yes,” he said. “I do have some requests.”

Her eyebrows jumped in surprise. “Oh,” she said, looking pleased by the prospect of not having to twist his arm. “Alright, then. What do you want?”

He took a breath. It had been something he had thought about, but only vaguely in the back of his mind – not with any expectation he could get them. But with Mara on his side, he had a shot. “I don't want to die dressed like this,” he said. “I don't want to look like a prisoner and I don't want to look like General Hux. I want to look like myself. A civilian. Get me the clothes I was arrested in, if you must, but I’m not facing down a firing squad as anyone but myself. Is that possible?”

She nodded. He knew she wouldn’t have to write any of this down to remember exactly what he wanted. “It’s possible,” she said. “I’ll look into it. What else? You have a few options, within reason.”

“For example?”

She took a long drag from her cigarette. “I heard from someone that you wrote up some memoirs. Would you like them to be published?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Everyone who saw the trial already knows your whole life story. There’s no further need for privacy.”

“I wrote them for Poe. He has them, now.” If they were ever to see the light of day outside of that, it would be for Poe to decide.

She nodded, understanding without needing an explanation. “Something else, then,” she suggested. “A long-distance call, a visit. A HoloNet interview, even, if that's your thing-”

“Can you get me outside?” he asked, very suddenly feeling his heart jump into his throat the moment he said the words.

She blinked. “Outside?” she repeated. “As in, an outing, or...?”

“I just,” and he had to stop then, for a moment, because he feared his voice would break if he did not steady himself. “I want to see the sky. One more time.”

Mara said nothing. She did not look at him, but seemed frozen staring over his shoulder. He knew that she knew what he was feeling. The approach of death had him grasping, not for freedom but for beauty. Let that be the last impression; let that be the touchstone for his thoughts when the blasters were trained upon him.

Finally, she said, “That will be difficult.”

“So you can't do it?”

“I said it would be difficult, not that I can't do it,” she scoffed. In that moment she seemed to come alive again, had shaken off whatever internal conflict had rendered her speechless. “Yes, I can do that for you, I just want you to know the value of the service you're getting.”

.

Each day on Ajan Kloss seemed hotter than the next; not only that, it was humid. Most of his life had been spent in a controlled climate, so dry skin and cold extremities had been more of an issue. Now, though, he was always damp and sweaty. He wasn’t sure which was better.

“Hey, Hux.”

He looked up from where he had been securing a tarp over a speeder with some surprise, because he knew the voice before seeing its owner. Sure enough, Finn appeared on the other side of the speeder, wordlessly pulling down that side of the tarp. Together, they secured it. Even though rain was not a certainty that night, everyone acted as if it were when they were preparing to settle down for the evening. They couldn’t really afford to act otherwise.

Once that was done, Armitage leaned against the speeder and waited. Finn took some time not saying anything at all, running his hands over the tarp as if it needed to be neat and tidy. Armitage caught himself doing something similar, from time to time; he had to wonder if it was also old First Order training that kept Finn so diligent in everything he did.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Finn said, after a moment.

Armitage raised his eyebrows. “About what?” he asked. Finn tended to avoid him, as a rule, which he understood. His presence made the other man angry. Why he had sought him out was a mystery.

“I heard about what happened on the boundary hike,” he said. “At the river.”

“Oh,” Armitage said, but he was still confused. Did Finn think he was somehow to blame for Poe almost getting killed? He hadn’t been responsible for the route–

“I just wanted to say, I'm grateful,” Finn said. “Thank you.”

Armitage was momentarily speechless. It was said _so_ earnestly, and without malice, as if Armitage was someone he actually liked. Finn was not thanking him because it was the correct or done thing to do, but because he truly, honestly cared about Poe, and Armitage’s actions had mattered to him because of it. As someone who loved Poe too, Armitage could not believe Finn was brave enough to say it to him.

“For saving Poe’s life,” Finn said, slowly, as if seriously concerned Armitage was not keeping up with the conversation; to his credit, Armitage had done nothing but stare at him. “I’m grateful.”

“Ah,” Armitage said. He still had no idea what to say. “Alright. I’m. You’re welcome.”

“You know,” Finn said, frowning, but his tone betraying warmth, “I never noticed how kriffing awkward you were until you came here.”

“Well, we never did talk much back then,” Armitage said, dryly. Finn actually _laughed_. He walked away immediately afterwards and they never spoke that warmly again, but that was the day Armitage understood he was a part of something now. Whether he and Finn liked it or not.

.

Later in the evening, Mara knocked on his door. She worked fast.

“I did it,” she proclaimed. She came in with two assistants, a boy and a girl not yet twenty, who rather nervously circled around him as if he might bite. Mara, however, ignored their reluctance.

He eyed the packages in their arms. “You went shopping?”

“What? No.” She gave him an annoyed look; no doubt irritated that he was not yet able to read her mind, or something of that nature. “I was able to get the contents of the apartments you and Poe were living in when you were arrested; as in, I’ve brought your clothes. You know he just left everything behind? Your flyboy has a terrible attention span.”

“Hmm,” Armitage hummed, noncommittally. It’s not like he and Poe were living there – that had just been where the Republic had set them up for Poe’s diplomatic visit which, of course, ended up being nothing more than an elaborate trap for Armitage. The fact Poe had left everything behind only proved that he had realized how important it was to get back to Ajan Kloss and destroy anything dangerous Armitage might have had in the workshop or their home. Poe had always been on his side.

She snapped her fingers under his nose. “Stop spacing out,” she said. If it had been anyone else he’d have said something very sharp and very insulting, but somehow four – five? – days into their working relationship she was already getting away with murder, in a manner of speaking. In any case, it wasn’t like he could fire her. “Put it all down over there,” she directed her assistants, who rushed to comply. After depositing everything in the corner they left without another word, and Mara sighed.

“They’re a work in progress,” she told him.

“They’re terrified of me,” he said. “Give them some credit.”

“Yes, people think you’re frightening for some reason,” Mara said. “I bet it’s your past as a warlord.”

“I was not a warlord.”

“Whatever,” she said, settling herself in at the table. The door was left wide open, which he appreciated – even though there were guards standing right outside, it did give him a semblance of something beyond the room. Apparently, she was content to stick around for a moment.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked.

“I want to see what kind of clothes you wore, obviously,” she said, without a trace of embarrassment or shame. “I’m very curious.”

“Morbid,” he remarked.

“Only when we consider your death sentence.”

He began to go through the boxes – there were only three, as both Poe and Armitage had a very relaxed view of possessions – but there was one item which he was curious about seeing. Was it still there?

For almost his entire life, Armitage had worn black, or grey, and every now and then tan. They were the colours of order and of military sensibility, and Armitage had never really been given any choice in the matter. Despite that, though, he had always been incredibly focused on his appearance, because it had been another way to shore up his defenses. And the First Order had always demanded nothing less than perfection.

On Ajan-Kloss, though, he’d encountered an unforeseen learning curve: how to dress himself when there was literally no one else telling him what to do. And while he had been fine for the most part wearing whatever random Rebellion cast-offs were available, he began to find he preferred certain cuts and styles, even started to veer away from the aggressive perfectionism of the First Order.

The jacket had been an actual surprise in that he had not expected it at all. Poe had given it to him the night before his arrest. It had not been an idle purchase, either, Armitage had known that straight away – for one, it was tailored to him. Nothing had been tailored to him since the First Order. He hadn’t put it on, but he could tell the moment he was handling it.

“Nice jacket,” Mara remarked, when Armitage unearthed it, realizing he had been holding his breath. The leather was creased where it had been roughly folded and crushed; he drew a fingertip down one, thinking about how that crease would never have the chance to go away with wear.

“Poe bought it for me,” he said, looking up from where he was kneeling on the floor. “I never did get to wear it.” The minute Poe had said why he got it – “You always get so cold, I thought-” – Armitage had very forcefully veered him in the direction of the bedroom. They had been arguing, on and off, for a couple of weeks by then, but that had never stopped them from being completely devoted to one another.

Something flinched on Mara’s face. “Well,” she said, “You can wear it now, if you want.”

“I suppose.”

“Why did he leave it behind?” she wondered.

“He had to go back home,” he said. “He had to go through our things.”

“Why?”

“To destroy evidence,” he said.

“Alright, well,” Mara said, staring at him before sighing and rolling her eyes, “that’s something you should tell your lawyer _before_ the trial, not after.”

“We lost anyway.”

“Rub it in,” she said, getting to her feet. Despite her cavalier attitude, he was starting to detect a few cracks in her façade; he wasn’t surprised she was leaving in a hurry, now.

She ran a hand over her face, and sighed again. The crisp, cool woman who had defended him seemed far too tired for being so young. “Well, if you need anything else, let the guards know and they’ll pass it on to me. I’ll take care of it. Small things. You shouldn’t have to spend your last days wanting.”

“You don’t have to do that, Mara,” Armitage said.

She looked at him in some surprise, seeming as if she might laugh. “Sure,” she said, shaking her head. She started to walk out the door but then she stopped in her tracks, took a step back and glanced at him over her shoulder. “Oh, right, nearly forgot. I got it for you.”

“Got what?”

“The sky.” She smiled, faintly. “Tomorrow night. As long as you want.”

For a moment he wasn’t sure if he could speak. He knew what she was doing, knew she had waited until she was almost gone to tell him the news. As someone who also avoided emotional upsets, her tactics were easy to read. “Thank you,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” she said, before she just shrugged and left.

.

The apartments the Republic had set them up in were roomy and lavish, in a building reserved solely for politicians and leaders, speaking of wealth that reminded Armitage of his life before. He had never been someone to bask in luxury, but he had a view of the finer things in life and it was always important to him that they be within reach. They had been proof of his successes. He drank the finest whiskies and wore the best fabrics not because he particularly cared, but because they were what he had earned.

Here, though, all of the luxury was because of Poe. And it was strange and delightful to see the other man in such surroundings, because he found them nearly puzzling. “Who even needs this much room?” he’d asked, when they’d first arrived. “This is crazy.”

“Nobody _needs_ this much room,” Armitage had replied, amused. “You just get it for being a General. And a war hero. And I suppose you run an entire settlement, now.”

“It’s _weird_ ,” Poe had stated.

The one thing he hadn’t complained about was the bed. Of that, Poe seemed brimming with approval. No, wait – that wasn’t right. He had complained that it was so big he’d have to go searching for Armitage in the night, but that had been more of a joke.

On the morning of their fifth day there, Poe did what he usually did, which was leave for the endless meetings and conferences he had been called there to attend in the first place. “I’ll see you later,” he said, kissing Armitage goodbye. Armitage, for his part, was starting to feel like some kind of kept woman for sticking around there all day, waiting for the other man to come back. He did not risk wandering about on his own.

They must have been under surveillance, because by then their movements would have been easily mapped and organized. The perfect time to strike would have been agreed upon. Not fifteen minutes after Poe left – he was punctual in leaving, not because he meant to be, but because Armitage insisted on it – there was a knock on the door. The second he answered it, he knew exactly what was happening.

He’d warned Poe, and Poe had been convinced that he was wrong. Their conversation about it had ended in a stalemate, yet as Armitage opened the door to several blasters in his face, he didn’t have time for the satisfaction of being right.

It was a good thing he had just changed, or they would have arrested him in a robe. They gave him no time, simply came right in and put the binders on his wrists. It was the most cowardly of moves, something Armitage himself might have orchestrated in the old days to remove a rival. “You’re coming with us, General,” a hulking trooper said, a Republican patch on his shoulder with a few extra bars for his rank.

“I’m not a General anymore,” Armitage had said.

“Who kriffing cares,” the man had snarled. They hustled him out into the corridor, which had been forcibly cleared, he saw. Guards everywhere. “You’re under arrest; we are escorting you to a containment facility. Give us a reason, though, and you won’t make it there alive.”

And that had been the last time he had seen Poe before their final meeting. Even though he had been expecting it, it hadn’t hurt any less and it hadn’t been less terrifying, mostly because he didn’t know if anything untoward had happened to Poe. It took several days before someone confirmed to Armitage that Poe had not been arrested as well. He was safe.

Armitage went through the rest of the boxes Mara brought him. Poe had left everything behind in his race back to Ajan Kloss, so Armitage wasn’t surprised to find some of the man’s clothes in there with his own. He was, however, struck immediately by their scent, so strongly that for a moment he found he couldn’t move; just knelt there on the floor, breathing in, and out, and trying to shove down the pain that began to work its way up from his chest to his throat.

That night Armitage fell asleep in one of Poe’s shirts.

.

His armed escort arrived at eight in the evening the next day, one hour after the suns were due to set. They put a set of binders on him, which he wasn’t surprised by, but it did make him curious to see how far they would be travelling. If they were simply stepping outside, they might not have bothered.

He was hustled out a side door and loaded quickly into an armoured vehicle as if he were several kilos of credits instead of a prisoner. They didn’t go far; it was maybe twenty minutes by Armitage’s internal clock. When he climbed out, he saw even more guards were waiting to receive them.

Thirty armed guards for one war criminal was a bit overkill, but there was no one to complain to.

“What is this place?” he asked, as they entered an elevator. They managed to cram eight guards in there with him, as if he was somehow going to escape if not enough people were watching him.

“It’s an old weather station, sir,” said the woman in front of him, swiping her security key before selecting the top floor. “We have a brand new one fifty miles away. This one is mostly used for education purposes.”

“Ah,” he said. Mara had come through for him in more ways than one.

The elevator opened and Armitage stepped out onto the observation deck before stopping, one of the guards behind him accidentally jostling his shoulder.

It was a proper observation deck, as he might have seen at any number of First Order bases. The floor was a shiny black, and there were no walls but durasteel girders and glossy transparisteel that ringed the area.

And there was nothing overhead but sky.

Armitage took a deep breath. The air was cool and clear in his lungs.

“If you’ll follow me, sir,” said the guard. He glanced at her, nodded, and followed her to the middle of the deck.

“We’ve been ordered to give you some space so you can stargaze in peace,” she said. “Hands.”

He held them up, and she unlocked his cuffs, hanging them from her belt.

“Please don’t try to jump off the roof,” she added, tiredly. “I don’t feel like chasing anyone tonight. You can stay out here as long as you want. Just let us know when to take you back.”

She strode away, which was just as well. He had no interest in smalltalk with anyone, let alone a conversation. Not when the sky was opened up above him. He glanced around, noticing the guards that were in and out of the shadows, ringed around him like fence posts.

If he wanted to, certainly he could find a chair. Instead he laid down on the ground. Armitage had laid on worse things in his time.

He hadn’t even realized stargazing was something people _did_. It had just never occurred to him – he had spent most of his life up in space, or in locked down facilities. Looking at the sky was just an action, with nothing more behind it than ascertaining the weather. Looking _behind_ him, however – that was more his style.

But on Ajan Kloss, after the war, he finally saw stars the way he was certain they were meant to be seen. Without the lights of a city or towering buildings to encroach on the sky it was simply an endless expanse, revealing more and more the longer he looked at it. There was peace to be found in the darkness between each star; or that’s how he felt as he meditated upon them, night after night, with very little else to take up his time.

Eventually they stopped locking him in at night – with his tracker there was no point – so he had started climbing on top of the roof of his prison once he had ascertained it wouldn’t collapse underneath him (he had little faith in whoever had built it in the first place; it was more like a shack). Laying on the roof he had an unimpeded view of the sky.

It wasn’t something he discussed with anyone else, but everyone knew. Tico had discovered that about him, quite by accident – she had gone looking for him one night, only to have him call down at her when she found the place empty. After that, it was only a matter of time before Poe and everyone else found out. Apparently, hanging about on roofs was considered odd behaviour. But no one ever stopped him; mostly everyone seemed surprised that he’d gotten up there without the use of a ladder. And after the crocodile – or rather, after Poe had cornered Armitage and asked him _why_ he had saved him – Poe had begun to keep him company.

One night – the night that ended up being his last in his old prison – Poe came, finding him on the roof as usual. Neither of them said anything; Poe just made his way up with little fuss, settling down next to Armitage on the roof. It was an oddly-shaped spot on the building, but there was room for two people to lay back comfortably.

“Hi,” Poe murmured, leaning in for a kiss, his lips soft. Armitage tasted a hint of salt and sweat.

Kissing Poe was an unraveling experience for him; it was like his mind and body became slowly unspooled from the other man’s attentions, from his tongue to his lips and even to the hands he pulled slowly through Armitage’s hair. With a single kiss Poe could bring him alive; with another he made Armitage feel soft and muted and safe.

Eventually, Poe murmured, “I wanted to talk to you about something.” Armitage almost didn’t hear him.

He blinked, trying to shake off the satisfaction suffusing his brain, making him feel slow and sleepy. “About what?” he asked.

Despite apparently wanting to talk, Poe mouthed gently at the pulse in Armitage’s neck. “You like me, right, Armitage?” he asked.

The question was so incongruous Armitage laughed in surprise; Poe pulled away, looking worried. “I don’t act like _this_ around people I don’t like,” he said, and Poe smiled.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said.

Armitage laid back on the roof, raising his eyebrows. “What are you attempting to ask me?”

Poe’s lips thinned. “You are…” he began, no doubt trying to come up with some sort of rebuke, but then he seemed to realize he had nothing satisfactory. “Right,” he finished.

Armitage grinned at him.

Poe sighed, shaking his head. “I had an idea,” he said, settling down beside Armitage. “But I know you’re a bit- well, I don’t know _that_ …”

“Know what?”

“Well-”

“You’re very bad at this,” Armitage commented.

Poe sighed. “Do you want to move in with me?” he asked.

Armitage laid there, stunned momentarily into silence. Poe gazed over at him, expectantly. Bathed in starlight he was the most beautiful man in the world, and for a moment Armitage ached for him.

“Yes,” he said.

Poe blinked, startled. “Wow. Really?”

“You’re asking me if I would prefer to stay with you or sleep in a shack, Poe,” he said. “Besides, this is only an outbuilding. It was never meant to keep anyone long term. It’s better suited to storage.”

“Ah, very romantic,” Poe said, but he looked happy.

“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Armitage said, smiling back – when Poe smiled he had a hard time not doing it as well. “You’re not asking me because you need extra storage space, are you?”

“I’d be lying if that didn’t cross my mind,” Poe said. “I was prepared to bring it out as an argument, actually, to convince you. Appeal to your logical nature.”

“Well, we can use that to explain to everyone else why I’m suddenly there.”

“I don’t need to explain myself. Neither do you.”

Armitage moved his gaze back to the sky. Poe nudged his way a bit closer, placing his cheek against Armitage’s shoulder. He couldn’t tell if the other man was looking at him or the stars. “We hardly know each other, though,” he said, after a few moments. It was true. Despite all they had been through together, for the most part they had kept each other at a sort of distance. For Armitage it had been a case of self-preservation; for Poe, a way to hold his own feelings at bay while he tried to maintain his leadership. Armitage felt he knew Poe’s character, but there were so many other things he could learn, too.

Poe sounded unconcerned. “We’ll get to know each other.”

Armitage held his breath, nervously. He released it with a sigh. Poe nuzzled his neck, so Armitage turned onto his side, even though it was uncomfortable, and kissed him. His mouth touched Poe’s lightly, carefully. “I’ve never slept well,” he confessed. “And not with someone in bed with me.”

“We can get a second bed.”

“I’d like to try with you.”

Poe trailed his fingertips up Armitage’s arm. He had a way of looking at Armitage that made him feel like he was something precious. “Do you want to go and try right now?” he asked, softly.

That was how it really started – not the spying, or the battle, or the settlement or the waterfall or the crocodile. Armitage’s undoing began when he went to sleep beside Poe. Every night they got into the same bed together, and things happened between them. Sex and love, opinions and secrets; noise, but also silence. They mapped each other’s bodies and memorised each other’s thoughts. The terrifying experience of being known in his entirety had _happened_ , and now it was a safe space for him to keep his heart, even though it hurt.

If he let his mind drift, it was easy to pretend Poe was lying beside him right now, the way things used to be. What a beautiful thing to take with him into the hereafter, if such a thing existed. A memory softer and more poignant than anything else he had ever experienced, but somehow more expansive than the night sky.

Armitage tore his gaze away from the heavens, sitting up from his prone pose on the floor. It was time. “I’m ready,” he said.

.

They were standing in water, ankle deep. Armitage was wearing a shiny pair of boots reminiscent of his old uniform, but clearly they were Republican made, as water was starting to seep in. He looked down into the shallows, saw rainbow-coloured minnows darting about under the surface.

Rey stood up from where she had been kneeling in the water, trousers clinging wetly to her muscular legs. “How many guards outside?” she asked.

“Four,” Armitage said. “Four in the hallway.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw them whenever I left for court,” he said, frankly.

She tipped her head to the side, gazing at him. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Rey, what are you-”

“You say there are four out there right now,” she said. “There are four when you open the door, you know that. How do you know they’re still there when the door is closed?”

They were standing… where were they standing? The jungle. Water. He tried to look around him, but then Rey had her hands on his face, cold and painful, forcing him to look into her eyes. He felt so muddled he did not even try to pull away from her touch. “It’s alright,” she whispered. “I’m here with you.”

There was a strange centre of calm inside of Armitage, like the eye of a hurricane. The rest of him, though, was torn apart and damaged, blown about in the wind like the flag of a long-dead nation. He started to pull away from her, but she hung on, nails digging into his face. Her eyes were turning black, like storm clouds spreading across the sky.

“I'm sorry about this,” Rey said.

Her fist plunged into his chest. Her fingers wrapped around and squeezed his heart until it burst. When he screamed it felt like water was filling his lungs, like he was drowning. Rey stepped forward and he fell back and together they plunged, as if from a great height.

The last time Armitage saw Rae Sloane, he had been twenty-one. He’d always felt like things would have been different for him, if she had stayed – he may not have felt compelled to have his father assassinated, for one – but now he thought there had really been no chance of any other outcome.

Brendol had to go; it was not that he was hateful, and arrogant, and cruel. Those were things about the man that Armitage had already come to terms with a long time ago, though it certainly helped with the decision. It was the fact that Brendol Hux was a member of a generation slowly losing its grip, and if any real change was to be made then there had to be a shift in power. Armitage had decided to do something about it.

If Rae Sloane had not disappeared then she likely would have taken care of that in her own way. She was a singularly impressive individual who always seemed to know exactly what she was doing, and it reflected in her rank and the respect that was always due her. The First Order was going to succeed where the old Republic, the Empire, and the New Republic had failed, and it was using the brightest minds of the generation that would usher in its greatness. She was indisputably one of them.

But looking back, now, Armitage saw things far less… naively. It was not that through the lenses of time Rae Sloane became less honourable and just; more that time had sharpened that image into even starker reality. He saw now that she had been dangerous to the old guard of loyal Imperialists; she was a threat to the power and riches they had accumulated in their own careers.

The last time he had seen her, nothing had been amiss. She congratulated him on his recent promotion, seemed to suggest he had a long way to go but would get there faster than anyone else. “You’re looking sharp, Armitage,” she’d said. Unlike his father, whose weight gain had begun shortly after the battle of Jakku and had continued quite uninterrupted since then, Armitage was as trim and slender as a knife. “The officer’s uniform looks good on you.”

They had chatted for a few minutes. He was aware that her time was precious, and her choice to spend some of it on him had never ceased to make him feel important. It was an importance completely absent from any derived through rank or deed. He just felt like he was important to _her_ , and that was something he coveted.

He did wonder, now, if machinations had been in place even then to remove her. How could someone so skilled and decorated simply… vanish? He never did get the full story; he was not high-ranking enough and, in any case, Brendol would tell him nothing of value. In fact, the more he asked, the angrier his father became, not that Brendol could do anything about it but order him to go away – by that time Hux belonged to the First Order, and he was protected by his position.

He still hated the man, though, and Brendol hated him back. It had been an easy decision to do something about it.

It was clear, now, that no matter how high one’s rank, dangers still loomed. Armitage could not be certain he would survive to see the brave new world Rae Sloane had told him about; and when Enric Pryde had entered the picture, Armitage could no longer remain blind to what was happening. It was a miracle he was even still alive – Kylo Ren seemed bent on keeping him around for entertainment value – so he had decided he ought to do something about it. Anything he could, really, to stem the tide of the Empire. He owed it to Rae Sloane, and to the untold number of people who had suffered for nothing.

So he began to gather data.

He and Rey stood in one of the desolate corners of the _Steadfast_ , one of many nooks that barely saw the attention of the housekeeping droids, let alone anyone living on the ship. This was one far away from his quarters, far away from the bridge. It had been where he had transmitted the information about Palpatine, prying open a databank and re-routing its circuits during a time when he was meant to be sleeping.

Rey stepped forward and placed a hand on the wall, feeling the thrum of the ship and its engines beneath her hand. “This is an important place for you,” she said. “In the shadows.”

Armitage found his hands going to his chest, which was not torn open and flayed; instead he was whole and complete. What had Rey done? _Had_ she done anything? He watched her press her cheek to the smooth metal, closing her eyes.

“I can feel it,” she said, gently. “How wonderful. I never could figure it out until I saw your drawings. It’s as if once I saw them, I could feel it, too. The energy always circulating.”

Armitage stepped up beside her and placed his hand against the panel. “It’s always there,” he said. “Energy can’t be created or destroyed, in a closed system. It moves or it transforms into something else.”

“Yes,” she agreed. She opened her eyes to gaze at him, hopefully. “Yes, exactly. Are you starting to see it?”

“I always see it.”

“But look beyond,” she replied. “Go further. There is more in the world than engines and reactors and firepower. There is more than coal or steam or kyber. Feel how big the world is; it is infinite. We are so small, Armitage. Specks of dust.”

She was right; even as she spoke Armitage felt the expansiveness of the universe, its unending reach that started from where his feet touched the ground and continued on into the horizon with no end. It was open and boundless, not a closed system at all. Suddenly he felt weak and sick, crushed beneath the weight of everything and nothing.

“How did you know it was there?” she asked.

“What was there?” He was so confused. He barely understood what was going on, but Rey’s words were relentless, crashing into him, a point of clarity regardless of everything else.

“The crocodile,” Rey said. “The one that you saved Poe from. How did you know it was there?”

“I saw it.”

“Did you?”

It had all happened so quickly. Armitage had not given it much thought, beyond the sprained ankle he’d been left with. “Yes,” he said, solidly. “I saw…”

She waited, patiently. Finally, he just shook his head. “How do you know there are four guards outside your door, right now?” she continued. “The door is closed. You are asleep. How do you know?”

“Rey, please,” he said. It was not the universe but the truth hovering over him – or perhaps it was one and the same – but he could not look up. He did not dare. He knew what he would see but he did not want to confirm it.

She looked genuinely sad. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You can’t run from it, Armitage. It’s always been there. It’s a part of you.”

He covered his face with his hands. “Stop,” he breathed.

“ _No_.” She sounded so angry he had to look at her again. They were no longer on the _Steadfast_ , but at the waterfall. It was dusk and night was starting to fall, soft and sleepy around them. “The galaxy may not be done with you, Armitage Hux. You _wounded_ it.”

“Stop this at once.”

She approached him, and everything about her now seemed heavy with unspoken threats. Except her eyes, which were strange and doe-like, full of love. The combination rooted him in place and he could not run, could not even _think_ of running.

“Don’t be afraid of you who are,” she said. She placed a hand on his chest. This time her touch was warm and steady. “Accept the inevitability of your journey. Open yourself up. _Fall_.”

Armitage stepped back, feeling the ground move out from under him, pulling away from his feet. As he had so many nights before he was on the edge of a precipice. But this time, for some reason, he felt calm and did not wake. This time, he leaned back into the darkness and fell.

.

When he woke up that morning the world had a strange, dreamy quality. It was as if he could not understand the concept of time; it seemed to pass him by without leaving its mark. He went through the daily routine of showering and shaving, though he did not gel or pomade his hair, letting it dry where it fell.

He wondered where Rey was. He wondered if it was really her that had been speaking to him, or someone – something – else.

When his breakfast arrived, he was informed he had one hour left. It did not even seem reality that this would be his last meal; it did not seem real that this was even his last day. He felt confused, but only because now as he paced from one end of the room to the other he felt he could detect something else around him besides the silence. A buzzing, a vibration, a push and a pull, an _existence_ of something underneath his conscious awareness. Subconsciously, though, it was there. It had always been there.

 _Force sensitive_. What a kriffing joke.

He should not even be surprised. His entire life seemed to be one long, elaborate joke, so how surprising was it really that much of his adult life had been marred with terror of the Force, only to realize he’d had a propensity for it all along?

He knew what happened, or at least he had his suspicions. How he had begun to see the vibrancy of life all around him, back to back with decay, on Ajan Kloss. It had been a small crack at first in his mental armour that had begun to spread, fissures tracing through him. Eventually that hard, angry, seething core of his had cracked, feelings blooming like flowers that had worked their way through concrete.

He had fallen in love with Poe and it had split him wide open. Now, he would die with more awareness than ever before, if he managed to wake from his fugue.

He stared at the uniforms he had thrown into the corner of the room with something close to loathing. If he had been feeling sharper or more focused he might have found it in himself to tear them up with his bare hands, but tossing them there in a disgraced heap would have to do. He wore his own clothes now: reinforced dark green trousers, boots, the jacket from Poe. He was fine with this being the last day General Hux drew breath if it meant the First Order would die with him.

He felt a whisper of sound against his ear.

 _The galaxy may not be done with you, Armitage Hux_.

He shook his head to clear the voice out, and then his door opened.

“It’s time to go,” the guard said.

Someone else came in with him, holding a tool Armitage recognized from when they had inserted the tracker for his vitals. Armitage pushed up his sleeve and held his arm out, not flinching as the tool was placed against his skin, right over the faint, discoloured mark the insertion had left behind. A thin razor pushed beneath his skin, sliding the pill-shaped tracker out before a misting of concentrated bacta sealed the flesh back together.

He had not been expecting that, but he was glad it was gone.

“Right,” said the guard who had opened the door. “Hands out for the binders.”

He pulled his sleeve back down and held out his hands, the cuffs cinching into place around his wrists before he was led out into the hallway. As expected, there was a security team there; six in all, suited up with body armour and blasters. Unexpectedly, there was also Davin Serz.

Armitage stopped. “What is this?” he asked.

Serz smiled, shaking his head. “We really can’t sneak a single thing past you, huh?” he said. “There’s been a change in plans.”

Armitage immediately tried to jump back into his room, but the two guards at his side grabbed his shoulders and propelled him roughly forward and down. There were hands everywhere, holding him as he fought, lashing out with his legs and elbows.

Serz placed his boot to Armitage’s shoulder to force him down to the ground, and leaned over him. “I’m afraid that brain of yours is just too _expensive_ to blast apart,” he said. “Don’t worry; no one will miss you.” Armitage saw the hypospray in Serz’s hand before he felt it in his neck, and within seconds he had blacked out.

He came to slowly, noticing that he was moving somehow. It had not been true unconsciousness, because there was no confusion when he woke; though his mind was muddled he seemed aware of what was going on, understood that he was in trouble and that things had gone very wrong. Serz must have used one of the more common sedatives, used to keep violent prisoners quiet. His feet were dragging behind him; he was being held up on either side by guards, who were carrying him along between them.

“Sir, he’s waking up,” someone said.

“Kriff, already?” Serz sounded amused. “No matter. We’re almost at the hangar.”

Armitage kept his gaze down at the floor, recognizing the patterning. It told him they were still in the same building that had housed him through the trial, but where was everyone? The corridors were silent, and they passed empty rooms as they went along.

 _Money_ , Armitage thought. A lot of money and a lot of influence had cleared that building out for Davin Serz, so that he might transport Armitage somewhere secret with minimal witnesses. It made sense: let the trial run through, and then who was to know if he never did make it to his execution? As long as he disappeared and the right people were bribed, all would be well in the galaxy.

But he would not disappear. He would go somewhere else, with people who no longer had the rule of law hanging over their head to stop them from taking whatever they wanted. Truth serums, mind-altering substances, even brainwashing. Every iota of information and knowledge and training the First Order had invested in him would be stripped from him until there was nothing left to use, and the world would suffer for it.

He couldn’t let it happen, but he was powerless to stop it. He clawed at the fog in his head, valiantly attempting to see through it. It took him a few moments to realize he was letting panic overtake him, and he immediately stopped. Instead he began to reach out with his senses, curiously, as he might have done a long time ago when he was younger, feeling out for danger. Listening to the world around him, finding calm in a stillness that seemed out of reach. With each breath, he found stability. _Remain calm_. He could get out of this. He’d definitely gotten out of worse.

The fog was starting to lift, but he did not attempt to walk on his own, content to be dragged for the time being as he sorted out some kind of plan, or tried to. Better to let everyone think he was still very much incapacitated. It was only when he was shoved up against a wall did he open his eyes completely. The coolness at his back told him it was transparisteel he was leaning against, and he glanced over his shoulder.

Behind him was an aircraft hangar, its bay doors already open to the incoming dawn. It was small, perhaps only big enough to hold four citizen-sized spacecraft, though at the moment there was only one. A ship painted matte black and dirtied silver, its lines sleek and powerful. It looked like a weapon that was able to become airborne.

Davin Serz was a professional who knew what he was doing, so Armitage guessed without inspecting it that the craft would have no trackers on it, or anything else to betray who was on it or where it was going. A ghost ship. Once Serz got him on it, no one would ever find him.

“Right,” Serz said. “I want to be flight ready in ten minutes. Keep him quiet; we’ll dose him again once we’re airborne.”

Armitage took note of his surroundings as best he could while keeping his gaze relatively low. The more alert he appeared, the more likely Serz would change his mind and sedate him again right there. Besides him there were the six guards, which Armitage mentally numbered in order to keep them straight. They all were dressed alike, apparently all of equal rank, so it was the best way to organize them in his mind without memorizing their faces.

Armitage pressed his shoulders back against the window, using it to stand up a bit straighter, though a guard (2) still had one hand circled painfully around his bicep as if he might run or fall. “Who’s paying you?” he asked.

Serz looked over at him as the guards he’d labelled 1 and 4 headed for the ship, raising his eyebrows. “It doesn’t matter who,” he said. “The only thing that matters is how much.”

Armitage scoffed. Even as he fought the sedative he could still find it in him to be argumentative. “It always matters,” he said. “Money and power might be linked, but one is more dangerous than the other.”

A smile flickered on Serz’s mouth. “Such a philosopher,” he remarked.

And then they both heard it: footsteps. Armitage watched Serz in surprise, seeing from the way the other man suddenly sprung to attention that this was not backup of his own making. Who was heading towards them? “Act normal,” Serz directed his men, and motioned to Armitage. “And you? Don’t say a damn word.”

Armitage was fully prepared to make as much of a racket as he wanted to, until Mara appeared down the hallway. She seemed quite preoccupied, not really watching where she was going, before she ground to a halt at what she saw before her.

She must have come to send him off, of course. Armitage cursed whatever idiot had left the doors unattended, allowing her to stroll right in. He was sure Serz had similar feelings.

“Mara!” Serz asked, cheerfully breaking the silence. “What are you doing here?”

She stood there for a moment. She looked calm and unconcerned, but Armitage somehow knew how tense she was, how fast her mind was working, evaluating everything in front of her. “I had time this morning, figured I’d send my client off with one last apology,” she said, easily. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a slightly-crushed pack of cigarettes; she clearly smoked far more than she let on, because every pack she left Armitage seemed half-gone. “And I was hoping to talk the team into letting him smoke one last cigarette.”

“We don’t really have time to let him light up right now,” Serz said, dryly.

She snorted. “I meant on the transport,” she said, striding confidently towards Armitage, where he leaned up against the wall, still apparently being supported. He ought not be under the influence of any drugs at all, and he knew she saw it even as he was trying to shake it off. If this was a real escort to an execution, he would have been clear-headed.

He prayed that the bonds of civility would protect her, force everyone to act like everything was normal in time for her to get away. That seemed to be what Serz was doing, smiling as if Mara’s arrival was a pleasant surprise. Armitage fought even harder to shake the drug off as she approached.

She opened his jacket and tucked the cigarettes into the inside chest pocket. “Oh, and a lighter, I suppose,” she said, patting herself down. She slipped that into his pocket as well. Her movements were casual and unhurried, as if she didn’t suspect a thing.

She looked over his shoulder, where through the window the transport sat, being prepped. “Nice ship,” she remarked.

“Thanks,” Serz said, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

She sighed, raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Anyway,” she said, holding out her hand to Armitage. “Strange to say it, but, nice knowing you.”

Armitage looked down at her hand and carefully clasped it in his own, curling his other hand underneath the binders for a relatively normal handshake. He felt five pairs of eyes boring into the both of them. Her palm against his was damp, and he thought he could sense her heart fluttering madly in concealed panic, her pulse ringing through the touch.

In that touch, he found clarity. They were separated by different lives and different fates, yet they were the same type of person. They understood one another. _I grew up fast, too_. He shed the drug like an item of clothing and then he was _awake_ , feeling as if he had been mentally hit by a bucket of cold water. “Goodbye, Mara,” he said.

Mara turned away. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said, striding past Serz, turning the corner the way she had come and disappearing. For a moment nobody moved.

“She knows,” Serz said, into the silence. Everyone drew their blasters. “Find her. Kill her.”

A simple shout would do her no good; it would warn her, but what she really needed was a head start. He could give her both. Armitage, pushing his foot against the wall for leverage, threw himself onto the nearest guard who had his back turned, throwing his hands over the man’s head to thrust the connecting binders up against his throat. They overbalanced almost immediately, falling to the side from the slam of Armitage’s weight; and the guard, unsuspecting, had clenched his hand immediately around the handle of his blaster and pressed the trigger.

A half dozen shots in quick succession rang out into the loading bay; not striking anyone, unfortunately, but they were loud. Armitage smirked even though he couldn’t breathe with another body crashed on top of him, and jerked his elbows back, strangling the guard. He heard Serz shouting before several gloved hands were wresting his arms from around the guard’s neck and the man, gasping, was pulled upright and off of him. Then someone activated the stun function on the cuffs, and Armitage blacked out.

It was only for moments, though; when he opened his eyes Serz was still there, along with four guards left. One of them had been prepping the transport for flight, so he had a feeling the ship had been left alone for now due to the possible security breach.

On his back and looking down the wrong end of several blasters, Armitage held both hands up in their binders in surrender. Even in the gravity of the situation, he could not help but notice that one of the blasters was pointed at his face, another at his crotch. Such were the dangers of being universally hated.

“You two watch him,” Serz snapped.

“Do you want us to bring him to the ship, sir?”

“No,” Serz said, glaring down at Armitage. “Don't even let him get up. I don't trust him. Everyone else, fan out. That loudmouth is going to tell everyone if we don’t stop her.”

Just as quickly as it had all begun, it was quiet. Armitage looked up at the two men guarding him, mind working away. Guards 3 and 4.

“Go ahead and give me a reason, Hux,” one of them said, making sure to thumb the safety catch on and then off again. Unlike his fellows outfitted with smaller blasters, this man had a powerful rifle at his disposal. Even though Armitage was aware he was now worth vastly more alive than dead – at least to someone out there – that was not a guarantee the young man pointing the blaster at him was being paid enough to care. So he didn't move.

He had to do something, though. Each second could mean life or death for Mara. His eyes flickered down to the cuffs, trying to place what model they were. Magnetic latch, he knew. Apply the right pressure and force, and the cuffs would fall free.

_The Force._

He had never consciously used the Force before, but he _had_ done it purposefully, he knew that now. One of the guards shifted, and Armitage noticed that their centre of balance was off, just from the way they stood. That one was young and inexperienced, he suddenly thought. Good. And he recognized those blaster models – they did not come with a fingerprint lock.

And then Armitage realized that these were not bad odds. The General Hux of old would not have minded risking his life for something he really, truly wanted. There had been many things wrong with him, but he had always been two things: ambitious, and a survivor. The time on CY-78 and then the months of languishing in a cell had tempered many things about him, like the anger he once used to keep himself alive, but he found it all flooding back as he laid there, thinking about how even the best laid plans were going sideways.

The old General Hux also had years upon years of combat lessons to fall back on. Really, all he needed was the element of surprise.

The biggest impediment were the binders securing his wrists. He had the back of his hands resting on his chest, the only way he could lay there comfortably. There was no way he could pick the lock. But as he looked down at them, up close, he felt he recognized them. The dormant electricity inside of the cuffs that had been used to stun him lay curled up as if in wait. Around that energy, the binders seemed to flutter, as if alive. One little nudge and they could fall open for him.

“Will you let me sit up, at least?” he snapped, with all the fervour of a General who had once commanded one of the galaxy's largest war fleets, despite laying on the ground in a top secret prison facility. He directed his query to the guard holding the blaster rifle; its barrel was the longest.

The guard scowled and stepped closer, closing the distance between Armitage with the blaster as he did so, pointed down at his chest. “No,” he said.

Armitage had always had a smart mouth. It used to get him into trouble until he’d learned to shut up, but there was always a scrolling commentary in his mind. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was infuriate people. “So how much are they paying _you_?” he asked, smirking up at him. He felt so _calm_ , just then. Almost languid. “Probably too much.”

The man snarled, drew the rifle back for a second in what Armitage immediately recognized was a precursor to a physical blow. But that did exactly what he wanted, which was bring the rifle within reach.

He threw one elbow up to protect his face and misdirect the thrust, the other grabbing the end of the rifle. As he did so the cuffs simply fell off, dropping to the ground as if they had never been fastened at all.

Gripping the end of the rifle he thrust it back, slamming the butt of the gun into the other man’s chest before tugging back down just as roughly. Stricken and off balance the man fell, and even though for a moment Armitage felt his muscles scream with pain – he had not taken part in proper combat in a long while – they could not forget what had been drilled into them. As he rolled over and up onto his knees at a speed that had saved his life on more than one occasion he kicked one leg out, throwing the other guard’s feet out from under him.

Then he was standing, with a blaster, hands free, and two guards on the floor. His fingertip instinctively found the switch that changed the setting to stun, and he blasted the two of them before they could get up.

No, the odds had not been that bad at all.

There was no time to secure them, but he could strip them of their weapons for when they woke up. Working quickly, Armitage relieved them of their blasters; even if he didn’t use them he could toss them away somewhere to buy time. Then he stood up and, for a moment, found himself looking at the transport sitting right there in the hangar just beyond, empty and unmanned, waiting to be boarded. In it, Armitage Hux could disappear.

Hefting the rifle in his arms, he turned away and went in search of Mara.

He hadn’t done anything resembling this since his younger years during the Cold War, but the habits came back to him easily enough, keeping his step light and swift as he moved, clearing each hallway and corner as he worked his way back. Mara had two options: to try to leave through whatever door had let her in, or to find his cell, where she could lock herself in and hunker down until she called in help. There was no other way to leave while Davin had the hangar locked down.

Around one corner was a guard; Armitage stunned him, stepped over his prone form, and kept going, ears peeled for the sounds of a skirmish. He thought he heard blasts going off and he took the first corridor to his right.

He was too late.

Armitage took down the two guards standing there; neither of them were paying attention as they fiddled with their comms, undoubtedly to let Serz know the problem had been handled. The blasts dropped them immediately.

“Mara,” he hissed, jumping over them, running and dropping to his knees to slide to a stop in front of her. From the placement of her hands it had been an abdominal shot – or several, judging from the wet, sticky blood suffusing her clothes and getting on the floor. Her complexion, before a soft, earthy brown, was rapidly turning grey.

She was on her side, curled up. Armitage helped her sit up against the nearest wall, but when she shifted and slid to the side she smeared blood along the bright white surface. Her eyes were closed, but he could feel her breath.

“Mara,” he said, gently slapping her cheek. “Mara, come on. Wake up!”

Her eyes fluttered open and she gasped. “Oh, shit,” she said, weakly. She raised one hand up to look at it, covered in blood.

“Can you stand?”

“Hux,” she said, her voice ragged and wet-sounding. “Listen to me very carefully. You need to take everything I have-“

“You’re coming with me.”

“Just shut up for a second,” she said. Blood was on her lips but her eyes were hard and bright. “I’m not going to make it so you need to take everything I’ve got. Once I’m dead they will make me disappear. Take what I have as proof I was here; maybe it will save you.”

“Still thinking like a lawyer,” Armitage said, but he was already patting her down. She was right. This was a top secret operation that she had wandered into, and whoever was behind it – a wealthy politician, or someone else with money and ambition, maybe even the New Republic itself – would make sure it was covered up. Mara’s disappearance would bring up a lot of questions, but far less than the revelation that Armitage Hux had not been brought before the firing squad as arranged.

He felt their time together running out, as quickly as the blood was leaving her.

She weakly motioned with a bloodied hand to her throat and Armitage carefully unfastened the top of her jacket, finding the chain of a necklace. “Maya,” she whispered, as he extricated it. A locket dangled from the end. He did not open it, but he suspected what would be inside.

Identification, credits, a vibroblade (that surprised him, and then after a moment it didn’t). Mara didn’t carry much. Her eyes had closed but now they fluttered open again as he pocketed everything. “Why are you still here?” she mumbled, noticing that he was still kneeling on the floor in front of her. “Get out.”

His hands did not shake as he took out a cigarette and lit it, though he thought they should have been. He _felt_ like he was shaking, his muscles trembling from shock, but every movement was smooth and efficient. He noticed as if from a distance that he had gotten some of her blood on him. “At the trial you mentioned an age of enlightenment,” he said, taking the cigarette from his mouth to place it between her lips. She took a grateful puff. “Do you believe in it?”

He brought her hand to her mouth, steadied it against her face, even helped curl her fingers to keep the cigarette in place. He watched her take a slow pull. “I believe in it,” she mumbled, smoke drifting from her mouth. “What do you believe in?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll get there,” she sighed, gently, closing her eyes. Armitage got to his feet, looking down at her for a few moments, an unfamiliar emotion pressing down on his chest.

The cigarette still burned in her mouth, curls of smoke rising upwards, but Mara was gone.

He ran on his way back. Whereas before he had been wary of coming across a friend, now there were only foes, and his tactics became aggressive. He decided to go around, bypassing the earlier corridors, but now he had a good idea of how the warren of hallways patterned themselves out. It was a concentrated spiral, not uncommon in buildings meant to hold fugitives or prisoners. Of course, most fugitives were not educated in defensive architecture.

Despite his rounded route, he did go by corridors he had passed earlier; the spot where he had left the first guard before finding Mara was empty, so he must have regained consciousness and joined up with his fellows. They might have also re-armed themselves, so he had to prepare for that as well.

With Mara gone, the only thing he could do now was escape. The moral implications be damned; he had been given a chance and he was going to take it. He was going to survive.

He moved on autopilot. He was so angry, or maybe it was grief – in any case it was a painful feeling that put pressure on his throat that he didn’t like. His fingertips tried to flick the setting on the rifle from stun to deadly force, as if they had thoughts of their own, but he stopped himself. _Don’t start now_.

He was approaching the entrance to the hangar. He knew Davin Serz would be there. He _wanted_ him to be there. But he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until he discovered what Serz thought of him. Would he know that Armitage could memorize and make his way through the basement without needing floor plans? Or that he had successfully shaken off all of the sedative? Would he and everyone else be there to watch the transport, or had Serz decided to disperse his people to track Armitage down?

As Armitage approached, doing his best to keep out of sight and be silent, he saw it was the latter. There were only two men with him, flanked on either side as they stood just inside of the hangar, waiting. The other two would be searching for him, and the two he had downed by Mara’s body.

Sure enough, as Armitage thought things through in the shadows, a commlink crackled to life, audible even from where he was hidden.

“Sir, we found the lawyer. She’s dead.”

Serz held a communicator up to his mouth. “Jas and Lennox?”

“They’re waking up now.” Even through the comm, Armitage detected a touch of laughter. “He’s just been stunning us. I’d have expected a bit more fight in him, to be honest.”

“Well, be glad he’s only using the stun function, you moron,” Serz snapped, clearly unamused. “Find him and bring him back here. There’s nowhere for him to go, but the longer we sit idling here the less covert this operation becomes, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Armitage moved. He stepped out of the shadows, rifle at the ready, and took out Serz’s guards with two perfect blasts. The third he used to shoot the communicator right out of the man’s hand.

Serz leapt back, but the comm was already a smoking wreck on the floor. He held his hands high as Armitage approached, aiming down the sight, right at his chest. “Huh,” Serz said. “There you are.”

“Where did you think I was?”

“Lost in the maze?” Serz suggested, and shrugged. “Guess it doesn’t matter now. So what’s the plan? Shoot me? Take me hostage?”

“I don’t mind that first one,” Armitage said, frankly. “You need to stop talking. You’re wasting my time.”

“And what are you doing, then?”

“Well, my time is my own to waste,” Armitage replied. “That’s my prerogative. Drop your blaster, kick it to me.”

Serz frowned, as if annoyed Armitage had noticed he was armed. Very carefully he took the blaster out of its holster and lowered it to the ground, straightening up. Using his foot, he slid it across the floor of the hangar towards Armitage, but he did not move to pick it up.

He didn’t know what to do. Now that he had Serz there in his literal sights he found himself at a bit of a loss. Back in the old days General Hux always got his revenge, whether it ended up taking years or only a few seconds. But that had always been revenge against a slight to his dignity or his power. He had never in his life been faced with the consequences of losing someone. Even someone who shouldn’t have even mattered to him.

But she had.

“You killed my lawyer,” he stated.

Serz blinked, tipped his head to the side. “Oh, right,” he said. “That is a shame. She was definitely going places. Hey, wait,” he said, quickly, as Armitage shifted the stock of the rifle against his shoulder, as if to get a cleaner shot, “I mean, technically _I_ didn’t kill her. One of my men did.”

“That argument is so puerile we didn’t even use that one in court,” Armitage sneered.

“Fair point,” Serz said. Then he shifted on his feet, and Armitage detected a flutter of his fingertips, his hands lowering by about an inch. It was the only warning he got before Serz threw his right arm forward, a dagger flying squarely for Armitage’s face.

He thrust the rifle up to knock it aside, but then Serz himself was crashing into him, tackling him to the floor. Armitage tried to keep the rifle between them – not that he could fire it at close range, but in case there were any more knives up the man’s sleeve – but as they wrestled Serz was able to force it up and away, the gun thrust over to the side.

Armitage took advantage of the moment to force them up into a roll, because while he was on his back Serz definitely had the upper hand. The man was a bit shorter but much heavier than him, and he also had access to a sedative that would end the fight immediately.

Serz went with the momentum, immediately slamming Armitage back down against the ground, a painful crack at the back of his skull flaring to life, and for a moment he saw stars blink across his vision. And then Serz was choking him.

“Why the _kriff_ anyone thinks you’re worth this much trouble, I have _no idea_ ,” Serz grunted, hands cinched securely around Armitage’s windpipe. He was going to lose consciousness soon, but Serz was bigger and stronger, hands like a vice as Armitage clawed at them, and there was no way to get him off.

He saw Serz’s dropped blaster out of the corner of his eye, only a few feet away. Armitage threw his arm out to the side, his mind focusing like a beam of light. He heard Serz laugh, the sound coming from a distance, perhaps amused at what he saw as Armitage grasping at straws. The blaster was nowhere within reach.

That didn’t matter. _Come to me_ , he thought.

The blaster flew into his hand. Armitage grasped the barrel with fingers already weakened from lack of oxygen and slammed the weapon into Serz’s face.

He sucked in short, desperate breaths as Serz shouted and fell to the side, no longer a crushing weight. Armitage forced his elbow against the other man’s chest and flipped his own weight around, rolling and pinning Serz to the ground, now. Blaster gripped in his hand, he began to smash it into Serz’s face, over and over again.

He didn’t need to do it more than a few times, but Armitage kept going, fueled by an anger he didn’t fully understand. As his mind cleared and his eyes focused he realized he could stop, because Serz’s face now resembled something more commonly found in a butcher’s shop.

He was also unconscious. Armitage pushed the end of the blaster up beneath his chin, pointing upward. _Blow out his brains and have done with it,_ said the cold, disaffected voice of General Hux, somehow heard over the sound of his own ragged breathing. It would be so _easy_ , and then Armitage would not have to worry about this conniving, clever mind tracking him from one end of space to the other.

Then he heard his own words, spoken to Davin Serz on the day he had been offered the New Republic’s clemency, as if in chastisement. _I won’t kill any more people._

“Fuck,” he hissed to himself, and scrambled to his feet. He hit Serz with another stun blast to keep him down for longer, and also to make himself feel better. _I hope they have to shove your head in a bacta tank to fix that mess_.

He had no idea what supplies were on the ship and did not have time to check, so he armed himself, grabbing the rifle, as well as two smaller blasters and their holsters that he dragged off of the unconscious guards. Then he grabbed the stun cuffs for good measure, still laying abandoned on the floor.

Thus armed with his spoils, he ran across the hangar towards the ship. It sat still and quiet, untouched by the mayhem that had occurred. He saw his first glances had been correct as he boarded, the doors shutting behind him with a pressurized hiss: this ship was top of the line, made for covert operations. It would fly as silent as the night if need be; perfect for smuggling an illegal prisoner, or making an escape.

After a few years dealing with ships and speeders that Armitage kept worrying would fall apart while they were in use, this ship was like coming home. It was less than a year old. Armitage was willing to bet it was Canto Bight money that had built it, no doubt outfitted with plundered First Order tech. It all seemed very familiar.

It had already been half-prepped for space flight, so it only took him a few seconds to get the process going again. He was not a pilot, but he could fly as well as anyone else when it came down to it, especially a ship like this – brand new, with no risk of the damn engine falling out.

After everything he had just gone through it suddenly seemed too easy. There was no one around to stop him from literally just stealing a ship and flying away, and even though his anxiety jumped up a notch at the completely ridiculous circumstances he suddenly found himself in, he throttled it back down and focused on the matter at hand. Scanning the sky for any defense radar – the last thing he wanted to do was catch the attention of planetary defense missiles – he found that while it was active in keeping ships out of their orbit, there was nothing to stop him from leaving it.

The ship rose up, towards the dawn.

After a minute he dug out the locket he had taken from Mara, feeling along the edge for the opening. It was a holograph: when he opened it there was Mara, sitting and holding up a baby for the picture, the youngling’s toes brushing over her knees. The child was laughing as she was bounced. Mara looked dangerously young, her face round and open and smiling. _Mara and Maya_.

There was a chance – a very slim chance – that the baby in the picture was now a young girl, living somewhere safe, hustled off into the corners of space with no one to know but himself and Rose Tico. But he doubted it.

Armitage closed the locket, putting it away in his inside chest pocket, where he found the cigarettes. He input the coordinates for Arkanis – not that he _meant_ to go there, but it was the first thing he could think of, and right now he just needed to get away – and settled back to watch the atmosphere darken into the murkiness of space. He would figure out somewhere specific to go once he had put enough of a distance between himself and this mess; once he had a moment to stop and think. Once he had an inkling of how to track down Poe.

Gazing out at the expanse of space before him he leaned back in the chair, put his boots up on the dash, and lit a cigarette.


End file.
